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SHAKESPEARE PROBLEMS

By A. W. POLLARD y J. DOVER WILSON

SHAKESPEARE'S HAND IN
The PLAY of SIR THOMAS MORE

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

C. F. CLAY, Manager
LONDON : FETTER LANE, E.C.4

NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO.

BOMBAY ]

CALCUTTA [ MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.

MADRAS )

TORONTO : THE MACMILLAN CO. OF

CANADA, LTD.
TOKYO : MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA

SHAKESPEARE'S HAND IN
The PLAY of Sir THOMAS MORE

PAPERS by ALFRED W. POLLARD
W. W. GREG E. MAUNDE THOMPSON
J. DOVER WILSON y R. W. CHAMBERS

with the text of the III May Day Scenes
edited by W. W. Greg

CAMBRIDGE

JT THE U3^IVE7(SIT7' ?7{ESS
1923

It / t 1

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

PREFACE

The object of this book is to strengthen the
evidence of the existence (in the Harleian MS.
7368 at the British Museum) of three pages
written by Shakespeare in his own hand as part of
the play of Sir Thomas More. The contributors have
tried not to be over-eager in pressing their contention,
or to claim more than they can make good. They would
not have their readers less critical than they have tried
to be themselves, and are aware that from one quarter
at least searching criticism is to be expected, since if
Shakespeare wrote these three pages the discrepant
theories which unite in regarding the "Stratford man"
as a mere mask concealing the activity of some noble

c^ J

lord (a 1 7 th Earl of Oxford, a 6th Earl of Derby, or a
Viscount St Albans) come crashing to the ground. It
is here contended that the writing of the three pages is
compatible with a development into the hand seen in
Shakespeare's considerably later extant signatures and
explains misprints in his text; that the spelling of the
three pages can all be paralleled from the text of the
best editions of single plays printed in Shakespeare's
life, and that the temper and even the phrasing of
the three pages in the two crucial points involved,
the attitude to authority and the attitude to the crowd,
agree with and render more intelligible passages in
much later plays. In the Introduction it is shown
that the most likely date at which the three pages
were written is one which easily admits of their
composition by Shakespeare for the company for

vi PREFACE

which he habitually wrote. All these contentions
may be mistaken; but the Editor may at least claim
for his contributors that they have earned a right to
their opinions and that their conclusions cannot
lightly be dismissed. While there has been some
friendly interchange of criticism each contributor
must be understood as taking responsibility only for
his own paper.

Grateful acknowledgement is offered to the Dele-
gates of the Clarendon Press for their kindness in
allowing use to be made of the facsimiles of the six
signatures in Sir E. Maunde Thompson's book on
Shakespeare's Handwriting published by them in
1916.

A. W. POLLARD.
June 1923

CONTENTS

I INTRODUCTION

By ALFRED W. POLLARD

Appendix : Accounts of the Anti-Alien

DISTURBANCES OF 1595, 1586 AND 1593 FROM
CONTEMPORARY DOCUMENTS

II THE HANDWRITINGS OF THE

MANUSCRIPT

By W. W. GREG

PAGE
I

III THE HANDWRITING OF THE
THREE PAGES ATTRIBUTED TO
SHAKESPEARE COMPARED WITH

HIS SIGNATURES 57

By SIP E. MAUNDE THOMPSON, G.C.B.

IV BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LINKS BE-
TWEEN THE THREE PAGES AND
THE GOOD QUARTOS . . . .113
By J. DOVER WILSON

Appendix: The Spellings of the three
pages, with parallels from the quartos

V THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS— PAR-
TICULARLY POLITICAL IDEAS— IN
THE THREE PAGES AND IN SHAKE-
SPEARE

By R. W. CHAMBERS

142

VI ILL MAY DAY. SCENES FROM THE

PLAY OF SIR THOMAS MORE . 189
TEXT EDITED BY W. W. GREG

VII SPECIAL TRANSCRIPT OF THE

THREE PAGES 228

By W. W. GREG

PLATES

PAGE

I. Shakespeare's Signatures to Three Legal

Documents, 161 2, i 613 . . before 57

II. Shakespeare's Signatures to the Three

Sheets of His Will . . . before 57

III. The Addition (D) to the Play of "Sir
Thomas More," lines 72-87 . before 67

IV. The Addition (D) to the Play of "Sir
Thomas More," lines 126-140 . before 67

V,VI. The Small Letters of the Signatures
and the Addition (D) to the Play of "Sir
Thomas More" .... before 81

VII. The Capital Letters of the Signatures
and the Addition (D) to the Play of " Sir
Thomas More" .... to face 103

I. INTRODUCTION
By Alfred W. Pollard

THE writers of the successive chapters of this
book are interested in the old play of Sir Thomas
More mainly because, on various grounds and
with varying degrees of confidence, they believe that
part of a scene, represented by three pages of the ex-
tant manuscript, was composed and written with his
own hand by Shakespeare. Yet the play has some
interest in its own right and the section in which the
three pages occur makes a very popular appeal. Al-
though in the end the hero goes (manfully and merrily)
to an unjust death with the full sympathy of the
reader, or hypothetical spectator, the play is not a
tragedy, hardly even a chronicle history. It is made
up of three groups of scenes, each group being fairly
homogeneous and the scenes composing it with one
exception consecutive. The first group (scenes i and
iii— vii) describes from beginning to end the anti-alien
riots on the 'ill May-day' of 151 7, the quelling of
which is, with very scant historical justification,
attributed to More's pacifying oratory, and repre-
sented as promptly rewarded by knighthood (which
was conferred on him in 1521), membership of the
Privy Council (conferred in 1518) and Lord Chan-
cellorship (conferred in 1529). Of the scenes of the
second group (ii, viii, ix) the earliest shows More,
while one of the city Sheriffs (he was really a per-

2 INTRODUCTION

manent under-Sheriff), saving a thief from the gallows
as a reward for his help in a practical joke on a
pompous city justice; in the later scenes we see him
chaneins: clothes with his steward in order to trick
his friend Erasmus (who had known him since 1497),
giving an offensively long-haired servitor his choice
between prison and the barber (a story told in Foxe's
Book of Martyrs of Thomas Cromwell and here,
rather unhappily, transferred to More) and stepping
in to supply by improvisation the place of a missing
actor in an interlude performed in his own house for
the entertainment of the Lord Mayor and Mayoress.
Finally, the scenes of the third group (scenes x— xvii)
exhibit More's refusal to sign certain mysterious
'articles' presented to him in the King's name, his
resignation of the Chancellorship, and the successive
steps by which his seclusion in his own house at
Chelsea was followed by his arrest as a traitor,
despatch to the Tower, condemnation and execution.

The four episodes of the second group of scenes are
not very successful. The trick played on the pompous
justice is well told up to almost the end and then goes
to pieces; the trick on Erasmus is badly muddled; the
treatment of the long-haired servitor seems to have
aroused some doubts, as there are variant endings to
it; the improvisation is the best of the four, but rather
a slight matter to make so much of. Even if much
more perfectly set forth these stories would form a
very inadequate link between the picture of More's
(much accelerated) rise to power and his (equally
accelerated) fall, condemnation and death.

The last group of scenes show touches of dignity,
humour and pathos; but the writers do not rise to the
height of their argument, partly because they had not

INTRODUCTION 3

the courage explicitly to state it. More is shown re-
fusing to sign the articles exhibited to him by the
King's command, but the contents of the articles are
carefully left unexplained. Elizabeth retained the
ecclesiastical supremacy which More died rather than
approve, and blind as these playwrights were to the
difficulties in their path they had at least the wit to
see what must inevitably happen if they let him argue
his case.

In the first group of scenes there is no such hesita-
tion. The writers explain quite clearly what the 'ill
May-day' riots were about, and they are so full of
their subject that now and again they almost forget
their hero. In the two other groups of scenes More
is always in our minds. Even when Bishop Fisher
crosses the stage on the way to the Tower we think
not of him, but of More and the penalty he too will
have to pay. The anti-alien scenes are written for
their own sake; they come very near indeed to being
a complete play in themselves, a play in which More
appears as Athene might in some Greek tragedy, full
of reasonableness and persuasive wisdom, surpassing
the hero and heroine and yet not displacing them in
our affections. The hero and heroine are Lincoln and
Doll Williamson; and our deus ex machina, Sheriff
More, suffers somewhat in our esteem because the
hard facts of history made it impossible for him to be
represented as saving Lincoln from the gallows as (in
the play) he was deeply pledged to do. The effect of
this miniature play is weakened by the interposition
of the Sessions scene with its presentation (at once
lengthy and a little ragged) of the joke More plays on
the city justice, and again by the heaviness of the two
groups of scenes by which it is followed. It is a

4 INTRODUCTION

pleasure to print the miniature play for the first time
without these encumbrances. It is a pity that the
main purpose of our book forbids us to edit it specific-
ally for the enjoyment of modern readers, as it
deserves.

Of course the miniature anti-alien play was
doomed from the start to be censored out of existence.
It may be doubted whether a modern counterpart of
it would easily be passed for performance. The manu-
script shows us that a scene in which apprentices
wound Sir John Munday (Anthony no doubt intro-
duced this out of family pride) was cut out, as
dramatically superfluous and likely to cause trouble,
and the climax of the riot was re-written, no doubt
also to conciliate the censor. At first the censor him-
self, Edmund Tilney, seems to have thought that
something might be done by botching. He marks
individual passages for omission, and substitutes ' Lom-
bards' for 'Frenchmen' or 'strangers,' as there were
few Lombards in London at the time the play was
written, whereas Huguenots from France and refugees
from Spanish persecution in the Low Countries were
many, and the Londoners had little love for them.
But when he had got to the end of the 'ill May-day'
scenes he obviously saw that half measures would be
useless, so he went back to the beginning of the play
and wrote in the margin the drastic order

Leaue out ye insurrection wholy & ye cause therofF &
begin w* Sr Tho: More att ye mayors sessions w* a reportt
afterwards off his good seruic don being Shriue off London
vppo/z a mutiny agaynst ye Luwbards. Only by a shortt
reportt & nott otherwise att your own perrilles. E. Tyllney.

The use of the name of an actor Goodal in the margin
of leaf 13* recto for the part of a Messenger, and an

INTRODUCTION 5

attempt (see Dr Greg's note) to reduce the number
of actors needed to play scene vi, proves that the
players had been sufficiently hopeful of securing a
licence to 'cast' the play for performance. But this
drastic order must have convinced them that the play
was hopeless, and I agree with Dr Greg that the re-
writing of the climax of the riot in the three pages
with which we are specially concerned should be
looked on as an anticipatory attempt to placate Tilney,
rather than a (quite inadequate) effort to comply with
his order. In the first of these three pages the spectator
is no longer invited to sympathize with the objects of
the crowd, but to laugh at it amiably and note its
foibles. In the speech which follows, in which More
persuades the rioters to submit, he puts the case for
obedience to the royal authority at its very highest,
opposition to the King being represented as opposition
to God Himself. The players forgot that there might
be subjects which Authority would not allow to be
presented on the stage, however judiciously they were
handled, and that the rising of a London mob against
the foreigners whom it was the policy of Authority to
welcome might be one of them. But that the sub-
stitution of the three pages of the manuscript in which
the mob is ridiculed and obedience to the sovereign
exalted for the original scene which they displace
was due to a desire to propitiate Authority seems
certain.

The belief which underlies this book is that in
anticipation of trouble with the censor the players had
turned to an 'absolute Johannes factotum' who had
previously had no part in the play, and that it is thus
no accident that in these three pages we find the
attitude to mobs, the attitude to the crown, and the

6 INTRODUCTION

deep humanity, which are recurrent features in the
work of William Shakespeare.

II1

The play of Sir Thomas More was first printed in
1844 in an edition prepared for the Shakespeare
Society by the Rev. Alexander Dyce, who bestowed
much care on the task of transcribing the difficult
manuscript (Harl. 7368 at the British Museum) in
which alone it has come down to us, but contented
himself with a single page preface and some extracts
from Halle's chronicle and a ballad on the Evil May-
day of 1 5 1 7 by way of introduction.

Twenty-seven years after the appearance of Dyce's
edition Richard Simpson (a liberal Roman Catholic
theologian who towards the end of his life interested
himself greatly in Shakespeare) in an article in Notes
and Queries for July I, 1 871 (4th series, Vol. vin),
entitled 'Are there any extant MSS. in Shakespeare's
Handwriting?' claimed two sections of our play as in
Shakespeare's autograph. Simpson based this claim
mainly on the literary evidence, the 'Shakespearian
flavour' of these sections, but also on the character of
the handwriting, asserting that 'the way in which the
letters are formed is absolutely the same as the way
in which they are formed in the signatures of Shake-
speare.' On September 21 of the following year
James Spedding took up Simpson's argument, again
in Notes and Queries^ with a keen sense of its im-
portance. He suggested that the relevant pages of the
manuscript should be printed in facsimile to facilitate
their study, and at the same time reduced those which

1 Some use has here been made, by permission, of an article
contributed to The Times, Literary Supplement, 24 April, 1919.

INTRODUCTION 7

he thought could be assigned to Shakespeare to three,
on which is written the greater part of a scene de-
scribing the pacification by More of the anti-alien
riot of 15 1 7. As to these he wrote, very justly:

If there is in the British Museum an entire dramatic
scene filling three pages of fifty lines each, composed by
Shakespeare when he was about twenty- five years old1, and
written out with his own hand, it is a 'new fact' of much
more value than all the new facts put together which have
caused so much hot controversy of late years. As a curiosity
it would command a high price; but it is better than a
curiosity. To know what kind of hand Shakespeare wrote
would often help to discover what words he wrote.

For a third of a century the seed sown by Simpson
and watered by Spedding bore fruit only in occasional
references, but in 1908 the play was included in the
Shakespearian Apocrypha published by the Oxford
University Press under the editorship of Mr C. F.
Tucker-Brooke and in 19 10 by the enterprise of the
late Mr J. S. Farmer not merely the 'relevant pages,'
for which Spedding had asked, but the entire manu-
script was published in facsimile.

In 191 1 a great step forward was taken by the
production for the Malone Society by Dr W. W.
Greg of an edition of the play which must always
rank among the best examples of English literary and
palaeographical scholarship. In this the present state
of the manuscript was carefully described and it was
divided palseographically into thirteen leaves in a
main hand (called S), seven leaves of Additions in five
different hands (called A-E) and some notes by a
censor, easily identified with Edmund Tilney, Master

1 Dyce had dated the play 'about 1590 or perhaps a little
earlier.'

8 INTRODUCTION

of the Revels, one of whose duties it was to grant or
withhold licences for the public performance of plays.
In Dr Greg's classification the three pages assigned
to Shakespeare by Simpson, as amended by Spedding,
are in hand D. As to these Dr Greg wrote:

These hasty pages of D's have individual qualities which
mark them off sharply from the rest of the play. There is
wit in the humours of the crowd, there is something like
passion in More's oratory. So striking indeed are these
qualities that more than one critic has persuaded himself
that the lines in question can have come from no pen but
Shakespeare's. The possibility acquires additional interest
from the fact that the passage is undoubtedly autograph.
Here possibly are three pages in the hand that so many have
desired to see. The question is one of stylistic evidence, and
each reader will have to judge for himself. I do not feel
called upon to pronounce: but I will say this much, that it
seems to me an eminently reasonable view that would assign
this passage to the writer who, as I believe, foisted certain of
the Jack Cade scenes into the second part of Henry VI.

By a comparison with MS. Addit. 30262 fol. 66b at
the British Museum and with Henslowe's Diary fols.
1 01 and 114, at Dulwich College, Dr Greg had
identified the hand of one of the Additions to the play
(that which he calls E) as Thomas Dekker's. In
191 2, again by the enterprise of Mr Farmer, the
publication of a facsimile of Munday's play 'John a
Kent and "John a Cumber, then in possession of Lord
Mostyn, showed (as was promptly pointed out by
Dr Greg) that this manuscript is autograph and that
the writing is that of the bulk of Sir Thomas More,
that of the hand S to which we owe the thirteen
original leaves. Thus we now know that these thirteen
leaves were written by Anthony Munday, though

INTRODUCTION 9

the occurrence of the curious mistake 'fashis,' for
fashio, i.e. fashion, in linefi847 (Greg's numeration),
which no author could make in transcribing his own
manuscript, proves that for some of these thirteen
leaves he was only a copyist.

The manuscripts of John a Kent and Sir Thomas
More are connected not only by the first being wholly
and the second in part in Munday's writing, but also
by both being cased in leaves from the same fifteenth
century Breviary or Legenda, John a Kent having
also a patch from a thirteenth century copy of the
Compilatio prima of Canon Law by Bernard of Pavia.
Each, moreover, is inscribed on the front wrapper
with its title (the word 'booke' being used in each
case: The Booke of John a Kent and John a Cumber
and The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore), in large en-
grossing characters. The two plays must thus have
been in the same hands at the same time, and they
must also have continued probably for some years in
the same ownership, as both have suffered in the same
way from damp which has rotted the outer margins
of the paper leaves of both manuscripts in like manner.

The More manuscript is undated; that of John a
Kent below Munday's signature at the end of the play
bears a mutilated date ' . . . Decembris 1596,' in a fine
Italian hand differing from Munday's writing of the
same class and in a different ink. The mutilation is
unlucky, as on the probable supposition that the in-
scription was put midway in the breadth of the page
there is room for more than the word 'die' and a
number (which must have preceded 'Decembris'),
and if another word preceded the day of the month,
this might have revealed the meaning of the date
which at present is mysterious. The only point toler-

io INTRODUCTION

ably certain is that it cannot be the date at which
Munday completed and signed the play. Had it been
this he would surely have written it with his own
hand, it would have come more to the right on the
page in immediate connection with his signature and
would hardly have been in Latin. Latin, if we may
generalize from other notes in books, would be appro-
priate to a date of purchase, and if so, the date would
presumably be either that at which it was acquired
by the company of players by whom it was acted, or
that at which some private purchaser recorded his
purchase of it from the company. The refinement of
the hand and the use of Latin both support the latter
alternative, and if Fleay's identification of John a
Kent with The Wise Man of Westchester acted by
the Admiral's men in and after the autumn of 1594
is not now to be rejected this view must certainly be
preferred.

Three or four years after the publication of the
facsimile of Munday's John a Kent, which led to the
identification of the main hand of Sir Thomas More
as his, Sir Edward Maunde Thompson in contributing
a chapter on 'Handwriting' to the book on Shake-
speare's England,' with which the delegates of Oxford
University Press in 191 6 were to celebrate the ter-
centenary of Shakespeare's death, passed in review all
the various signatures, etc. which had at any time
been attributed to Shakespeare. He condemned all
the signatures1 save those respectively attached to

1 In a subsequent paper contributed to The Library (3rd
Series, July, 19 17, Vol. vm) Sir Edward gave in extenso his
reasons for regarding as forged the signature in the copy of
Florio's translation of the Essays of Montaigne, acquired by the
British Museum at the instance of Sir Frederick Madden, and
also that on the Bodleian Ovid.

INTRODUCTION n

Shakespeare's deposition (n May 1612) in the suit
of Stephen Bellott v. Christopher Montjoy, to the
conveyance of the house in Blackfriars bought by
him (10 March 161 3) and the mortgage deed of the
same (11 March 161 3) and the three to his Will
(25 March 1616). When, however, he came to the
three pages in the More manuscript he recognized in
the hand D of the Additions 'certain features' which
he had already noted in Shakespeare's signatures.
After an exhaustive study of the manuscript he be-
came convinced that here he was in truth confronted
with a holograph literary manuscript of our greatest
English poet. Late in 19 16 he published his con-
clusions and the evidence on which they were based
in a monograph entitled Shakespeare's Handivriting
(Oxford, at the Clarendon Press), with full facsimiles
of the three pages and an independent transliteration
of them, differing in a few minute points from that in
Dr Greg's edition.

Sir E. M. Thompson's arguments were respect-
fully received and there was a general acknowledg-
ment by reviewers of the exceptional skill with which
the scanty evidence was marshalled and analysed.
But even if his monograph had appeared at some
quieter time than the very middle of the great war, it
would probably have met with a somewhat inert
reception, as the number of trained palaeographers is
but small, and few of this small number have made
any special study of the handwriting of Shakespeare's
day. Thoroughly to test the conclusions reached
requires not only some preliminary knowledge, but
much patient investigation and a gift of palaeographic
vision of a very unusual kind.

12 INTRODUCTION

III

The task with which anyone is confronted who
tries to draw conclusions as to the authorship of the
three pages of the play of Sir Thomas More by com-
paring the hand in which they are written with the
hand of the six signatures is not the comparatively
easy one of establishing or disproving the identity of
two literary hands of approximately the same date'. It
is not even the much harder task of establishing
identity between a literary hand and contemporary
signatures. It is the almost impossibly difficult enter-
prise of stating, to himself and others, the ground for
his own belief that the hand which wrote the three
pages probably, as will be shown, late in 1593 or
early in 1594, possibly a year later, would, or would
not, naturally develop in the course of the next
eighteen to twenty years in such a way as to produce
the signature to the deposition of 161 2, the two
signatures to the deeds of 1 6 1 3 and the three signatures
to the will of 1 616, all six of them written under the
eyes of lawyers, and all six of them, we may surely
guess, in moods as unlike those of dramatic com-
position as can well be conceived. The problem is
thus first to visualize how a handwriting after a lapse
of some twenty years and in totally different circum-
stances will show the natural effects of these and yet
preserve its identity, and secondly, to make the pro-
cess thus visualized intelligible to others not specially
equipped to deal with it.

In comparing contemporary specimens of hand-
writing in each of which alternative forms are used
for the same letter, if we are to establish identity we
must show not merelv that both the variants are

INTRODUCTION 13

present in each of the specimens, or groups of speci-
mens, but that they are present in approximately the
same proportions. After an interval of some twenty
years the rarely used alternative of the earlier specimen
may have become predominant, and the alternative
originally predominant only recur as a reminiscence.
In contemporary specimens a tendency in one to
substitute angles where the other has curves must
awaken suspicion. Where one group of examples is
some twenty years the later the difference may be
the natural result of the loss of freedom of hand which
comes with old age, or even of specific disease. In
such cases the conviction of an identity surviving
amid difference often becomes a personal impression
which it is difficult to transfer to others who have less
experience of handwritings and their changes, and
the most striking feature in Sir E. M. Thompson's
book was the success with which this difficulty,
and the kindred difficulty arising from change of
mood, were combated. But without the production of
more evidence the difficulties could not be entirely
overcome, and it is important therefore to estimate
what is the minimum effect which Sir E. M. Thomp-
son's book of 19 1 6 might be expected to have on any
unprejudiced student who recognizes that the problem
is one, not of the large and generous measure of
identity we may demand in contemporary specimens
claimed to be from the same hand, but of the much
less patent identity which may be looked for in early
and late specimens of a hand which has undergone
both development and degradation.

If we think of the use which might be made of
Sir E. M. Thompson's arguments in a trial at law
it is obvious that they are much more valuable for

i4 INTRODUCTION

defence than for attack. Let it be granted that if an
estate were being claimed on the evidence adduced to
show that the two hands are identical, a jury would
probably refuse to award it. But reverse the case.
Imagine the possessor of an estate challenged as to
his right to it on the ground of the superficial unlike-
ness of the hands, and Sir E. M. Thompson could
hardly have failed to win his case for the defence; and
this by itself is a great thing. If these three pages were
not Shakespeare's work the dramatist to whom on the
ground of style and temper I would most readily
assign them (despite a difficulty about the date) would
be Thomas Heywood. But Heywood is definitely
ruled out by his handwriting; that is to say, that if Sir
Edward was right, even to this limited extent, Shake-
speare survives a test which excludes Heywood, and
not only Heywood but all the other dramatists of
whose handwriting specimens are known to exist.

In the new study which he contributes to this
volume Sir Edward carries his point still further, and
also by his detailed examination of the forms of in-
dividual letters and by the illustrative plates which
accompany the examination offers important help to
students of Shakespeare's text who, as an aid to dealing
with passages suspected of being corrupt, would like
to begin by writing out the lines as nearly as may be
as Shakespeare might have written them himself. As
to these plates it should be noted that being copies,
not facsimiles, they are not put forward as having any
evidential value, or as superseding the complete fac-
similes given in Shakespeare's Handwriting, and at the
same time that they really possess high illustrative
value as being based on a handwriting which (if not
accepted as his) is at least more like to his than any

INTRODUCTION 15

other yet produced. Possibly some literary or epistolary
specimen of Shakespeare's writing authenticated by a
recognizable signature will yet be discovered and fulfil
the confident expectation of some high authorities
who, while regarding the evidence hitherto produced
as inadequate, yet believe that if a satisfactory test is
ever available Sir E. M. Thompson will be proved
to be right. In the meantime the industry and in-
genuity of Mr J. Dover Wilson have provided some
corroborative evidence of an entirely new kind.

The carelessness of Elizabethan printers has been
emphasized with wearisome frequency by Shake-
speare editors for the best part of two centuries. In
a good many instances, however, what are called mis-
prints in the early editions of Shakespeare (and of
other authors also) are not really misprints at all, but
faults or slips in writing which the printer has faith-
fully reproduced. There was a time when any printer
who was working on my own manuscript would tend
to print an n where I had intended to write a k,
turning greek^ for instance, into green. It became
evident to me that there was something misleading in
the way I made a £, and a study of the misprints in
the 'good quartos' of Shakespeare has made it evident
to Mr Dover Wilson that there was something mis-
leading in the way in which Shakespeare made several
of his letters. In the letters /w, #, u and combinations
of these with each other and with i it is easy to make
too few or too many strokes, and 'misprints' from
this cause are common in the early texts of Shake-
speare's; there are other misprints showing a similarity
in the way he made the letters c and /, and again in
the way he made r and w. Again, he must have made
his e and ^dangerously alike; also his e and o\ also he

16 INTRODUCTION

must have had a way of making an a so that it could
be mistaken for or. Therefore when Mr Wilson shows
that there are instances of the letters named being
written in the three pages not only in a way which
suggested to him that a printer might easily misread
them, but in a way which had actually led two such
experienced students of Elizabethan writing as Sir
E. M. Thompson and Dr W. W. Greg, when they
were thinking only of the correct transliteration of the
text, to produce the variants momtanish and moun-
tanish, Shrewsbury and Shrowsbury, ordere and orderd,
or sorry and a sorry, he makes a very considerable
addition to the argument from handwriting.

According to Sir Sidney Lee (preface to 1922
edition of his Life of William Shakespeare, p. xiii)
Elizabethan handwriting 'runs in a common mould
which lacks clearly discernible traces of the writer's
individuality.' Cockneys have been heard to say the
same of sheep, and yet the shepherd knows each sheep
in his flock from every other. Moreover, even with
a very liberal admission of the existence of common
features in the contemporary examples of the same
style of writing, wherever agreement is found where
difference is possible, it counts for something. To use
a large C instead of a small one must have been so
common a trick on account of the niggling form of
the little c that the fact that Shakespeare and the
writer of the three pages both clearly preferred the
large letter proves very little; and yet it counts, since
if only ten per cent, of contemporary playwrights
were without this preference, yet if ten per cent, can
be eliminated by this test, the field of choice is to this
extent narrowed. The way of writing an a so that it
looks like or narrows the field more than this, and

INTRODUCTION 17

when other common features are added, and we have
to find a playwright with Shakespeare's attitude to-
wards crowds, his attitude towards the monarchy, and
his broad humanity, in whose handwriting these
features also appear, but who is not Shakespeare, the
task does not seem a very easy one.

We owe to Mr Dover Wilson new evidence as to
yet another point in common between Shakespeare
and the writer of the three pages; they both spelt in
the same old-fashioned style. With the increased out-
put of books spelling was being modernized very
rapidly in the years (nearly a third of a century) which
separate the More manuscript from the publication
of the First Folio. The printers played a great part in
this process, lagging behind the really modern spellers,
but bringing the old-fashioned ones into some kind
of harmony with them, except when the retention of
some superfluous letter (mostly an e), or the use of
v for z, made spacing easier. The spelling of the three
pages abounds in old-fashioned forms; Mr Wilson is
able to parallel them all from forms which have been
preserved in the quarto editions of Shakespeare's plays,
and it is in the highest degree unlikely that these were
due either to the printer or to any intermediate copy-
ist. Here then is another characteristic which must
be discoverable in any playwright put forward as the
author of the three pages. He must be an old-
fashioned speller. The list seems to be getting rather
long.

As already noted, the original version of the
episode of More's dealings with the long-haired
serving-man was deleted, and variants substituted for

18 INTRODUCTION

it. Over some of the deleted lines a piece of paper
was pasted and on this and the neighbouring margin
we find twenty-six lines written, in the hand Dr Greg
calls C, which begin with a Messenger's announce-
ment to More that the Lord Mayor and his wife are
coming to dine with him. Over against the stage
direction 'Enter A Messenger to moore' there is
written in the margin: 'Mess T. Goodal,' denoting
that the part of the messenger was to be played by an
actor of that name, who is known to us as one of
Lord Berkeley's players in 1581 and one of Lord
Strange's at the time that they acted the second part
of the Seven Deadly Sins, probably in or before 1 590.
Until lately this was the only piece of evidence as to
the company for which the play was written and it
seemed to point decisively to that company being the
one for which Shakespeare wrote and acted. This
evidence still stands, and must still be reckoned with.
We can say with some certainty that if the play was
written before June 1594 it must have been written
for the company which it will be most convenient to
speak of as Shakespeare's, since the patrons who pro-
tected its members from being treated as rogues and
vagabonds changed with rather bewildering frequency
during the years with which the play has been, or may
be, connected. For reasons which are not very clear
this company became very large from about 1590 to
June 1 594. During these years Edward Alleyn, the
most famous actor of his day, was playing for it,
though he retained his title 'the Lord Admiral's
servant.' The plague was bad in these years; the
theatres were very little open and many of the players
went touring in the provinces. When the plague had
subsided, in June 1 594, the Lord Admiral's men were

INTRODUCTION 19

reconstituted as a separate company, and in their first
season made a great hit with a play called The Wise
Man of Westchester^ of which the book was the
personal property of Alleyn, who only sold it to the
company in 1601. In the summer of 1597 a^ tne
theatres were temporarily closed at the instance of the
Lord Mayor, but the Admiral's men played again on
October 1 ith, and they seem about this time to have
been reinforced with members of another company
(the Earl of Pembroke's) which had got itself into
serious trouble. After this the company went on
playing, but for whatever cause Alleyn temporarily
retired about December 1597, an<^ seems not to have
returned to the stage till nearly the end of 1 600. All
these facts have to be stated because

(1) the writer of Dr Greg's 'hand C in the play
of Sir Thomas More has been lately identified by
Dr Greg on the one hand, with the writer of the
'plot' of the Seven Deadly Sins (in which Goodal's
name appears) for Shakespeare's company not later
than 1 590, and on the other hand, with the writer of
a similar plot for the Admiral's men about 1597.
Dr Greg also believes that the writing on the wrappers
of the extant manuscripts of Munday's John a Kent
and John a Cumber and of Sir Thomas More is his.

(2) Munday is known to have been writing for
the Admiral's men in and after December 1597, an(^
Dekker (in whose hand is an addition to the revised
version of the episode of the long-haired serving-
man) in and after January 1 598. What Munday had
been doing in the preceding years we do not know;
that Dekker had previously been connected with
Shakespeare's company is pretty certain, as he was
arrested at its suit on 30 January 1599 (presumably

2 — 2

20 INTRODUCTION

for some old debt) and released on payment of
£3. 10/. by the Admiral's men.

(3) The Wise Man of Westchester^ which made
the success of the Admiral's season in 1594-5, has
been connected by Fleay with Munday's 'John a
Kent and John a Cumber which is concerned with the
feats of the wizard John of Kent and his contest with
John of Cumber and has its scene laid in and around
Chester. If this connection holds (and it was ac-
cepted in his edition of Henslowe's Diary by Dr Greg,
whom, since he is one of my witnesses, I must not
contradict, even though he himself attaches no weight
to the pronouncement), it seems fairly clear, since
The Wise Man of Westchester continued to be so
called in 1601, that the extant manuscript version in
which the play is called on the wrapper The Booke of
John a Kent and John a Cumber is the original form
of the play and that Alleyn after acquiring it paid for
it to be rewritten (not necessarily by Munday) under
a new name, which accounts for Henslowe entering
it in his Diary as ' Ne[wJ ' in 1 594. Still, here we have
Munday's play, if Fleay is to be held right, connected
with the Admiral's men in 1594-95, and Munday
and the writer of hand C further connected with
them in 1597 anc^ Dekker in January 1598. Are we
to say that Goodal may have followed Alleyn when
he left Shakespeare's company in 1 594 and that The
Booke of Sir Thomas More was written subsequently
to June 1 594 and for the Admiral's men and not for
the company for which Shakespeare normally acted
and wrote?

It is obvious at this point that the date of the play,
or at least of the Additions to it, is now of increased
importance. As long as the occurrence of Goodal's

INTRODUCTION 21

name in one of the Additions stood alone it suggested
a date round about 1 590. Now that three of the men
concerned in the manuscript are linked with a date
round about 1598 we have to consider rival possi-
bilities. The dates which have been suggested cover
in all some fourteen years (1586-99) and there is the
further possibility to be reckoned with that the play
was drafted at one of the early dates and rewritten
with Additions at one of the later ones. Dyce, the
first editor of the play, dated it 'about 1 590 or perhaps
a little earlier'; Richard Simpson brought it back to
'the last months of 1586, or the early months of
1587' on the score of the mention of an anti-alien
plot which was frustrated by the arrest of the youthful
conspirators (all under 21) in September 1586, cor-
roborated by the mention of Goodal and also (Greg,
fioo6 and tII48) of Ogle, a theatrical property-
maker, who at present is known otherwise only by
entries in the Revels' accounts for 1572-3, and
1584-5; Dr Percy Simpson in reviewing Sir E. M.
Thompson's book in The Library for January
191 7 drew attention to the grumble of the long-
haired servitor, Jack Faukner (Addition IV, 215 sq.)
'Moore had bin (sic) better a scowrd More ditch,
than a notcht mee thus' and suggested that the allu-
sion would have had point 'just before the scouring
or just after the failure' of a cleansing which was
begun in May 1595. A date in or soon after 1595
had already been favoured by Fleay and others be-
cause of riots by apprentices and unruly youths in
June of that year. I may add also that in 1595
the price of butter reached yd. as against an al-
leged standard price of 3^/., so that the danger
that it might go to lid. referred to in the first

22 INTRODUCTION

line of our three pages would have special point.
Lastly, Professor E. H. C. Oliphant of Melbourne
University, writing in the Journal of English and
Germanic Philology in April 19 19, favoured a date as
late as 1598-9 on the ground that the style of
Munday's share in the play suggests to him that it is
later than his second Robin Hood play written in
1 597-8 in collaboration with Chettle and earlier than
Sir John Oldcastle written in 1599 in collaboration
with Dravton, Hath wave and Wilson. A date as late
as this would also, he notes, suit very well for Dekker.
Dr Greg, in his brief communication to the Modern
Language Review^ Jan. 191 3, announcing the identity
of the main hand in Sir Thomas More with that
of Munday's John a Kent also favoured such a date
from a momentary 'hallucination' (his own word)
that the ' . . . Decembris 1 596 ' in the latter must be the
date of composition. He and Sir E. M. Thompson
are agreed in placing More between John a Kent and
Munday's autograph dedication to his The Heauen of
the Mynde which is dated 1602; but Sir Edward
emphasizes his belief that More is nearer to John
a Kent.

The recurrence of topical elements in Elizabethan
plays has been so emphasized bv various writers on the
drama that it is not superfluous to point out that belief
in it, when applied to riots in the streets of London,
should be qualified bv one obvious limitation. It is
really not reasonable to believe that a play introducing
a London riot would onlv have been written at some
date when the playwrights would have run a risk of
being hanged for their share in it. During any of the

INTRODUCTION 23

fourteen years with which we are here concerned a
play with an anti-alien riot scene would have been
sure of crowded houses. I submit that after 24 July
1595 no company of actors would have dared to ask
for a licence to perform either Sir Thomas More or
any play with the 'ill May-day' of 151 7 as an im-
portant episode in it. If anyone will be at the trouble
of reading the 1595 section of the Appendix to this
introduction he will see that in June of that year the
lads of London were in a very unruly mood. We
hear from Strype, but not from Stow, of a riot made
by 'poor Tradesmen' 'upon the strangers in South-
warke and other parts of the city' on June 12, and of
some 'young rioters' being committed to the Counter
and an attempted rescue (see Appendix: 1595). As
told by Stow himself the story is not of anti-alien
demonstrations, but of disturbances over the price of
butter and other provisions, for which other 'young
men' on June 27th were 'punished by whipping
setting in the pillorie and long imprisonment.' Two
days later on a Sunday afternoon there was a fresh
outbreak by 'a number of vnrulie youths' on Tower
Hill, followed by trouble between the Lord Mayor's
men and the warden of the Tower, which only the
tact of the Lord Mayor finally quelled. By this time
Elizabeth was thoroughly angry, and notified to the
Privy Council her pleasure that a Provost Marshal
should be appointed 'with sufficient authority to ap-
prehend all such as should not be readily reformed
and corrected by the ordinarie officers of Iustice, and
that without delay to execute vpon the gallowes by
order of martiall law.' The provost marshal exercised
his powers with discretion; we do not hear of his
hanging anyone. But the Queen could be as cruel as

24 INTRODUCTION

her father or her sister. Five of the 'unruly youths'
arrested on Tower Hill were indicted, not for ob-
structing the police, but for high treason. When the
trial came on at the Guildhall on July 22, it was held
'in presence of the Earle of Essex, and other sent
from the Queene,' and under this pressure from the
crown the lads 'were condemned of high treason, had
iudgement to bee drawne, hanged, and quartered, and
on the 24, of the same moneth they were drawne
from Newgate to the tower-hill, and there executed
accordingly.' I should not blame anyone not familiar
with the manuscript and its additions for believing
that, when it was known that these 'unruly youths'
were in danger of such a fate, a play of Sir Thomas
More was furbished up and the 'Johannes factotum'
of the day drawn in to help, in order by exaggerating
Henry VIII's clemency after the 'ill May-day,' ex-
alting the royal authority, hinting that the mob had
been promised a pardon (as the 1 595 mob may have
been by the Lord Mayor), to create an atmosphere
and expectation of mercy by which the Queen might
have been moved. Against such a theory there are a
host of dull reasons as to the time available, the nature
of other of the Additions and the plotting of the play
as a whole; also in place of Tilney's scoldings the
players would have been lucky, had they been so bold,
if they were lodged in no worse place than the
Counter. But it would have been a high adventure,
and I'd like to believe it, and that Shakespeare took
his risk like a man. But that after the Queen had
wreaked this really savage vengeance — and that it
was felt to be savage is shown by the repeated in-
sistence on the rioters' youth — players and play-
wrights should try to get a licence for a play in which

INTRODUCTION 25

Henry VI IPs clemency would inevitably be con-
trasted by the spectators with his daughter's cruelty,
and the hope of mercy abundantly held out by More
would inevitably be taken as implying that the same
hope had been held out by the Lord Mayor, is to me
frankly and entirely incredible. I cannot believe that
after those five lads were hanged and quartered as
traitors on Tower Hill on 24 July 1595 there was
any possibility of such a play being written; on the
contrary, I believe that the play, as we have it, was
recognized as dead and that seventeen months later
it was sold to an amateur of such literature along with
John a Kent.

When a street is gutted by a fire there is small
temptation to play with the flames. With a bonfire,
when it is not too big, it is another matter. All
through Elizabeth's reign there must have been a risk
of anti-alien outbreaks, as from France and Holland
there came numerous immigrants, and though in
most cases their original motives were to escape perse-
cution, religious or political, these became, not only
useful craftsmen, but keen traders, on whom many
Londoners looked askance, under the belief that they
enjoyed greater privileges than themselves. The
trouble in 1586 which led Richard Simpson to assign
the composition of More to that or the following year
seems to have been crushed before it came to a head;
popular feeling was concentrated in anger on the
Babington conspiracy, and the Queen's birthday be-
came the occasion of great demonstrations of loyalty.
There is no mention of anti-alien riots in Holinshed
or Stow, and there is nothing whatever in favour of
this date for the play in any form, while the occur-
rence of Dekker's hand in the Additions makes it

26 INTRODUCTION

impossible for these. It has been assumed by writers
on our play that the next outbreak was in 1595, but
in May 1593 there were 'complaints and libels'
against the Flemings and French which very seriously
engaged the attention of the Queen's advisers, as will
be seen in the two abstracts by Strype from papers
belonging to Lord Halifax, quoted in my Appendix.
The complaints were directed against the strangers
acting as retail tradesmen, and two accounts were
taken of their numbers, the ward authorities returning
a total of 4300, while their own ministers reduced this
to 3325. While these enquiries were making, 'libels'
were posted up both in prose and verse, the former
bidding the strangers depart out of the realm between
this and the 9th of July next, and ending ' Apprentices
wi 11 rise, to the number of 2336, and all the Apprentices
and Journeymen will down with the Flemings and
strangers.' Of the rhyme, posted up on the night of
May 5th and brought to the constable and the rest of
the watch by some of the inhabitants of the ward (oh,
that Shakespeare could have given his version of the
scene!), only the first four lines are quoted. 'The
Court upon these seditious Motions, took the most
prudent Measures to protect the poor Strangers and
prevent any Riot or Insurrection. Several young men
were taken up and examined about the confederacy
to rise and drive out the strangers, and some of these
rioters were put into the stocks, carted and whipt; for
a terror to other Apprentices and Servants.' But the
precautions taken were mostly secret and only the
Lord Mayor 'and discreetest Aldermen' were in-
formed of the real nature of the trouble. On the
other hand, the complaints of the tradesmen, the
counting of the aliens and the fact of the discovery of

INTRODUCTION 27

the libels must all have been common talk in May
1593, and if the secrecy with which precautions
against a rising were taken led to a belief that no very
serious view was taken of the matter, here, I submit
was just the combination of events and popular feeling
which playwrights might try to exploit by reviving
the memory of the famous riots of 151 75 without
seeming to themselves to run any exceptional risk.

As far then as our knowledge of the history of
London during our period extends the events of May
1593 seem specially full of suggestions for Munday
and his fellow dramatists and deceptively free from
any special warning of the fate which a play with an
anti-alien riot scene was certain to meet1. The anti-
alien movement came to the surface, which it does not
seem to have done in 1 586; it was exclusively an anti-
alien movement which was certainly not the case in
1595; and it provoked no such drastically deterrent
punishment. I must confess that I cannot quote the
price of butter in this year. It had been $d. and 6d.
a pound in 1591, and as it was $d. and yd. in 1595, it
was probably high enough in the intermediate year to
be a grievance. As to Moor Ditch, since the City
Fathers levied two-fifteenths to cleanse it in 1 595 and
it had not been cleansed since 1569 we may be sure
that in 1593 it smelt quite badly enough to be talked
about. Until a date more inspiring to the playwrights
can be produced I think we may be content with this,
and as regards our evidence of other kinds it is

1 It has been asked why the riot scenes in More should have
been forbidden while those of Jack Straw and Jack Cade were
allowed to pass. The answer is surely that the city could be
trusted to protect the Court, in protecting itself, from an in-
vasion of 'foreigners' from Kent or Essex, or elsewhere, but
riots about its own grievances were another matter.

28 INTRODUCTION

remarkable how it enables us to fit everything in. It
is late enough for Shakespeare to have made his mark
as a master of the humours of crowds by his handling
of the Jack Cade scenes in the first revision of Part 2
of Henry VI1. It is late enough for there to be nothing
improbable in Dekker having been allowed to try his
'prentice hand on a single episode in it2. It is late
enough, again, for Munday's play of John a Kent and
John a Cumber to be two or three years earlier, as the
handwriting suggests. On the other hand, late in
1 593 or early in 1594 (and we must allow some
months for the play to have gone through all the
stages 3 which can be traced) would not take us incon-

1 This found its way into print in 1594, having been entered
on the Stationers' Register in March as The first part of the
Contention. I may note that I am quite content to be no more
(and no less) certain of Shakespeare's authorship of our three
pages than of his authorship of the Jack Cade scenes.

2 Dekker is found writing for the Admiral's men in and after
January, 1598. He had almost certainly had business con-
nections before this with Shakespeare's company, as in January
1 599 he was arrested for debt at their suit, and ransomed by his
new employers. It may be worth noting that in his first entry
of his name Henslowe spells it 'Dickers' and in the second entry
'Dicker.' Now a 'Thomas Dycker, gent' had a daughter
Dorcas christened at St Giles', Cripplegate, on 27 October 1594
(D.N.B.). There is no proof that this was our Thomas Dekker,
but it seems likely.

3 The Additions are, of course, later than Munday's fair
copy, and Munday's fair copy of scene i shows signs of being
a prose revision of a scene originally in verse. There is nothing
in the tone of the prose, in so far as it is prose, to provoke a
playwright to drop unconsciously into decasyllabics, and yet
here are a dozen to be accounted for: Thou art my prize and
I pleade purchase of thee. — Thou thinkst thou hast the Gold-
smithes wife in hand. — Are Piggions meate for a coorse
Carpenter? — We may not, Betts; be pacient and heare more. —
Were I not curbd by dutie and obedience. — Hands off proude

INTRODUCTION 29

veniently far away from the occurrence of Goodal's
name in the plot of the Seven Deadly Sins^ or even
from the latest known mention of Ogle the wig-
maker. Finally, if the play was submitted to the
censor and his discouraging instructions received
early in 1594, about the time when Shakespeare's
company was returning from the long tour forced on
it by the closing of the theatres owing to the plague,
we may believe that John a Kent (just brought back
from touring) and More were put into their amateur
parchment wrappers from bits of the same manuscript
and inscribed by the owner of hand C, preparatory to
their being handed over to Alleyn, 'the servant of the
Lord High Admiral,' when in June 1594 his con-
nection with Shakespeare's company came to an end,
and the Admiral's men once more played as a separate
company. If Fleay was right John a Kent and John
a Cumber was a good bargain, as in its revised form
The Wise Man of Westchester it was a great success
in 1594-5. In its original form I believe that Alleyn
sold it to an amateur of plays in December 1596, and
that the Queen's cruelty in hanging and quartering
the five 'unruly youths' for high treason in July
1595, having made the improbability of any revision

stranger or [by] him that bought me. — Mistresse I say you
shall along with me. — He call so many women to myne assist-
ance, as weele not leave an inche vntorne of thee. — Brideled by
law and forced to bear your wrongs. — I am ashamed that free
borne Englishmen. — Should thus be brau'de and abusde by
them at home.

I should judge that in its first form this scene was Munday's
and that it was rewritten by B and copied again by Munday.
There may have been some interval between Munday's draft
and the revision, but when revision began I think it must have
been fairly continuous, as the playwrights seem partly to have
been revising their own work.

30 INTRODUCTION

of Sir Thomas Afore sufficing to procure it a licence
at last fully obvious, the ' Booke' of this was sold at
the same time and to the same purchaser, though the
untidy condition of the MS. and its lack of success
discouraged him from recording the date of purchase
as he did in John a Kent.

As against the second alternative date, late in 1595
or early in 1 596, I have already done my best to show
that the riots of that year and their sequel make these
months not specially probable, but specially improb-
able. Mr Fleay's explanation of the instructions to
delete the lines as to Bishop Fisher being sent to the
Tower by finding in them a dangerous allusion to the
Earl of Hertford being sent there in October 1595 is
surely unhappy. Fisher was sent to the Tower for
denying the royal supremacy in matters ecclesiastical,
and as Elizabeth claimed and exercised this supremacy
the censor's alarm needs no other explanation.

As for Professor Oliphant's suggestion of 1 599 as
the date of the composition of More'1 I will say no
more as to the development of Munday's style than
that in cases of multiple authorship such an argument
seems doubly dangerous, as assuming certainty for the
proposed attributions of the several scenes and ignor-
ing the natural difference between a man's style when
working alone and when working in collaboration.
So late a date as 1599, moreover, takes us fifteen
years away from the last mention of Ogle the wig-
maker and some ten years away from the last mention
of Goodal. It offers no explanation of the date,
'...Decembris 1596,' or how John a Kent and More
came to be bound in bitsofthesame manuscript. Lastly,

1 For a discussion of Dr Schucking's arguments for a still
later date, see Professor Chambers' contribution, p. 144.

INTRODUCTION 31

it assigns the play to the period when Alleyn had
temporarily left the stage (October 1597 to I6oo).
Though Professor Oliphant is a fellow-believer in
Shakespeare's authorship of the three pages, and in
other respects has done good work for the cause, I
cannot fight under his banner in this respect. If
More can be proved to be as late as 1599 I should
regard the date as an obstacle to Shakespeare's author-
ship of the three pages so great as to be almost fatal.
I say 'almost' fatal advisedly, because the other
evidence produced by Sir E. M. Thompson and Mr
Dover Wilson seems to me so strong that in spite
of obvious difficulties I should be unable wholly to
dismiss it. And if I were tempted to dismiss it, the
next time I read the three pages I should become a
lapsed heretic. Contemporary history, both of the
theatres and the streets, helps our attribution; the
handwriting helps it; Mr Dover Wilson's arguments
from misprints and spelling help it. But to me per-
sonally the alpha and omega of the case is that in these
three pages we have the tone and the temper of
Shakespeare and of no other Elizabethan dramatist
I have read.

1 had written as far as this when, as a result of a
chance conversation with Dr Greg, Professor R. W.
Chambers came to reinforce our little company of up-
holders of Shakespeare's authorship of the 'three
pages.' By contributing the last of the papers here
printed Professor Chambers has provided a reasoned
basis for the conviction expressed in my last paragraph
on the ground of 'general impression.' He first shows
that the remarkable resemblance between the passages
on order and authority in More, in Troilus and
Cressida and in Coriolanus is due not to copying or

32 INTRODUCTION

imitation but to the same mind reacting, at long
intervals, in the same way to the same ideas, and he
quotes other instances of resemblances between early
and late plays of Shakespeare only explainable along
these lines. As Professor Chambers develops his
analysis of Shakespeare's attitude to crowds the three
pages appear no longer in need of defence as Shake-
speare's; they become explanatory of this attitude, re-
vealing Shakespeare's humorous sympathy with the
puzzled minds of men in the street, a sympathy which
in other passages has been misinterpreted as mere
ridicule and scorn. To show that we can understand
Shakespeare better when we allow the three pages to
take their modest place in Shakespeare's work crowns
and completes all other methods of proof, and this
final paper has notably increased my hope that the
contributions which I have had the honour of bring-
ing together and thus introducing may be held
collectively to have proved their case.

I. APPENDIX

ACCOUNTS OF THE ANTI-ALIEN DIS-
TURBANCES OF 1595, 1586 AND 1593
FROM CONTEMPORARY DOCUMENTS

J595

Here are the events of 1595 (i.e. Ladyday 1595—
Ladyday 1596) as recorded in the 1605 edition of
Stowe's Annates of England, and the 1 607 edition of
The Abridgement or Summarie of the English Chronicle,
'first collected by master Iohn Stow, and after him
augmented with sundry memorable Antiquities, and
continued with maters forrein and domesticall, vnto
this present yeare 1607. By E. H. Gentleman,' i.e.
Edmond Howes who signs the address 'To the
Honest and friendly Reader.' In the case of each
event recorded we quote the fuller account.

1595. In the moneth of May after the grant of two
fifteenes towardes the cleansing of the towne ditch: the
same was begunne to be cast from Moregate towardes
Bishopsgate, where that worke was ended.

Abridgement, p. 499.

This yeere by meanes of the late transporting of graine
into forraine countries, the same was here growen to an
excessiue price, as in some places from foureteene shillings
to foure markes the quarter, and more, as the poore did
feele, for all thinges els, what soeuer was sustenance for
man, was likewise raised without all conscience and reason.
...Some premises and other yoong people about the citie of
London, being pinched of their victuals, more then they
had beene accustomed, tooke from the market people in
Southwarke, butter for their money, paying for the same

34 INTRODUCTION

but 3</. the pound, wheras the owners would haue had ^d.
For the which disorder, the said yoong men, on the 27. of
June were punished by whipping, setting on the pillorie

and long imprisonment The 29. of June, being Sunday

in the afternoone, a number of vnrulie youths on the tower
hill, being blamed by the warders of Tower street ward,
threw at them stones, and draue them backe into Tower
streete, being hartened thereunto by sounding of a trumpet,
but the trumpeter hauing been a soldier, and many other of
that companie were taken by the sherifs of London and
sent to prison. About 7. of the clocke the same night, sir
John Spencer lord maior rode to the tower hill, attended by
his officers and others, to see the hill cleared of all tumultuous
persons, where, about the middle of the hill, some warders
of the tower, and lieutenants men being there, tolde the
maior, that the sword ought not in that place to be borne up,
and therefore two or three of them catching hold of the
sworde, some bickering there was, and the sworde bearer
with other hurt and wounded: but the lord maior, by his
wise and discreete pacification, as also by proclamation in
her maiesties name, in short time, cleared the hill of all
trouble, and rode backe, the sworde bearer bearing up the
sword before him.

The Queenes maiestie being informed of these, and
sundry other disorders committed in & about her city of
London, by vnlawful assemblies: And some attempting to
rescue out of the hands of publike officers such as had bin
lawfully arrested, whereby the peace had bin violated and
broken: Her maiestie, for reformation thereof, by pro-
clamation dated the 4. of July, straightly charged all her
officers, both in the city, and places neere adioining in the
counties of Midlesex, Kent, Surrey and Essex, that had
authority to preserue the peace, and to punish offenders,
more diligently, to the best of their powers, see to the sup-
pression of all offenders against the peace, vpon paine to be
not only remooued from their offices, but to be also punished
as persons maintaining or comforting such offenders. And

APPENDIX 35

because the late vnlawfull assemblies & routs were com-
pounded of sundry sorts of base people, some premises, and
some others wandring, idle persons of condition Rogues &
vagabonds, and some colouring their wandring by the name
of souldiers, her maiesty, for better direction to her officers
of Iustice, and inquisition to be made, notified her pleasure
to her councell to prescribe orders to be published, and
straightly obserued, and for that purpose a Prouost marshall
with sufficient authority to apprehend all such as should not
be readily reformed and corrected by the ordinarie officers
of Iustice, and that without delay to execute vpon the
gallowes by order of martiall law. The orders prescribed,
were the same day also by proclamation published. Sir Th.
Wilford knight, was appointed prouost marshal for the
time, he rode about, and through the City of London daily,
with a number of men on horsebacke, armed, with their
cases of pistols &c. This marshal apprehended many vagrant
and idle people, brought them before the iustices, who com-
mitted them to diuers prisons. On the 22. of July were
arraigned1 in the Guildhall of London 5. of those vnruly
youths that were apprehended on the Tower hill, they were
condemned of high treason, had iudgement to bee drawne,
hanged, and quartered, and on the 24. of the same moneth
they were drawne from Newgate to the tower hill, and there
executed accordingly.

In this time of dearth and scarcity of victuals, at London,
an hens eg was sold for a peny, or three egs for two pence
at the most, a pound of sweet butter at jd. and so the like of
fish or flesh, exceeding measure in price, such was our sins
deseruing it. Annates, pp. 1 279-1 281.

This yeare in February, 1595 [i.e. 1 595/96], the Lord
Maior and Aldermen, as well for expelling vagrant people
out of the Cittie, reforming of common abuses to be aiding
to the Clarks of the market, for redresse of Forrainers false

1 The Abridgement adds, 'in presence of the Earle of Essex,
and other sent from the Queene.'

3—2

36 INTRODUCTION

waightes and measures, as to be assistant vnto all Constables,
and other ciuil officers for the more speedy suppression of
any distemperature that may arise by youth, or otherwayes:
they ordained two Marshals, vz. Maister Reade, and
Maister Simpson, and after them M. Roger Walrond was
admitted alone. Abridgement, p. 502.

In the year 1595 the poor Tradesmen made a riot upon
the Strangers in Southtoark, and other Parts of the City of
London; whereupon was a Presentment of the great Inquest
for the said Borough, concerning the outragious Tumult
and Disorder unjustly committed there upon Thursday
June 12, 1595, and the Leaders were punished, and also
the chief Offenders.

The like Tumults began at the same time within the
Liberties (as they are called) where such Strangers com-
monly harboured. And upon the Complaint of the Elders
of the Dutch and French Churches, Sir John Spencer, Lord
Maior, committed some young Rioters to the Counter. And
when some of their Fellow-Apprentices and Servants
gathered in a Body, and attempted to break open the
Counter, and deliver the Prisoners, the Maior went out in
Person, and took twenty, or more of them, and committed
all to safe Custody; and promised to proceed against them
with all Severity, as he signified in a Letter to the Lord
Keeper, dated 12th of June, 1595.

A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster.
By John Stow. Very much enlarged by John
Strype. London, 1720. Vol. 11. p. 303. Part of
a chapter on 'Strangers settled in London.'

APPENDIX 37

I586

Recorder Fletewode to Lord Burghley1.

Right honourable and my singular good Lord, this present
daie, from two of the clocke untill six, my Lord Maior
with some of his brethren, th' Aldermen, and myselfe, dyd
examyne certaine apprentices for conspiring an insurrection
in this cittie against the Frenche and Dutche, but speciallie
against the Frenche, all things as lyke unto Yll May Daye,
as could be devised in all manner of cyrcumstances, mutatis
mutandis; they wanted nothing but execution. We have
taken fyve, all of an age, yet all under 21, four of them
Darbishire borne, the fyfte borne in Norhamshire. We are
searching and seeking for the principall captayne. We hope
we shall heare of him this present night, for he hath bene
working all this day in the Whyt Hall at Westminster, and
at his coming home we trust to have him. We have this
night sett a standing watche armed from nyne untill seven
in the morninge, and do meane to contynue so long as it
shall be thought convenient unto your Honor, and the
resydue of my Lords.

Mr. Alderman Woodcocke, who marryed the wydowe
of Mr. Lanyson, shall be buried uppon Mondaye next.
Sir Rowland Hayward is extreme sicke, and greatly dis-
tressed (our Lord comfort him!); my Ladie his wife is like-
wise verie sicke.

This night Mr. Attorney Generall sent his man unto me
to sett my hand and seale unto a warrant to summon a quest
of enquirie to appeare tomorrow at Westminster Hall. The
citizens when they shall heare of it, will lyke thereof verie
well, for they all crye owt that justice may be done uppon
those traitors2.

1 Quoted from Thomas Wright's Queen Elizabeth and her
times (1838), 11. 308.

3 The persons concerned in Babington's conspiracy.
[Wright's note.]

38 INTRODUCTION

The foresaid apprentices, being of the mysterie of
plasterers, are committed unto Newgate uppon the Quenes
Highnes and her counsells comandement, where they are
lyke to remayne, untyll they be delivered by speciall
warrant. Here is presentlie no other thing worthie of
writing. Wherefore I beseech God to preserve first her
Majestie, and then your Lordship, from all those traitors
and such other wicked people.

From the Guylde Hall, this present Tewesdaie, the sixt
of September, at seven of the clocke in the eveninge, i 586.

Your Lordships most humblie bounden,
W. Fletewode.

At the sending away of my man this Weddensday morn-
ing, all the bells of London do ring for joye, that, upon the
7th of this monethe, being as this daie, Ao. 25, H. 8, her
Grace was borne. There will be this daie but specially great
feastings at supper. I have been bidden owt this night to
supper in six or seven places.

J593

From John Strype's Brief Annals of the Church
and State under the reign of Queen Elizabeth^ being
a continuation of the Annals of the Church of Eng-
land. Vol. iv. London, 1731.

Num. cvn.

Strangers, Flemings and French in the City of London.
And Complaints of them and Libels against them; Anno
1593. MSS. Car. D. Hallifax.

They contented not themselves with Manufactures, and
Ware-Houses, but would keep Shops, and retail all manner
of Goods. The English Shopkeepers made several Com-
plaints and Remonstrances against them. Whereupon a
strict Account was taken in every Ward of all Strangers

APPENDIX 39

inhabiting within London, with their Servants and Children.
And Certificates were returned the 4th of May. When the
Total of all the Strangers, with their Children and Servants,
born out of the Realm, were 4300. Of which 267 were
Denizons.

Another Scrutiny was made the same Year, 1593, by
Order of the Chief Magistrates. Which was done by the
Ministers and chief Officers of the Foreign Churches in
London, and in the same Month of May. By which the
Number of the Strangers of the French, Dutch and Italian
Churches, did amount to 3325. Whereof 212 were found
to be English born.

Complaint of them.

The Artificers Freemen within the City and Suburbs in
London, made Complaint, by several Petitions, against the
Trades and occupations exercised by Strangers. And upon
due Information the Housholds appeared to be only 69 S

Libels set out against the Strangers.

While these Enquiries were making, to incense the
People against them, there were these Lines in one of their
Libels.

'Doth not the World see, that you, beastly Brutes, the
Belgians, or rather Drunken Drones, and faint-hearted
Flemings; and you, fraudulent Father, Frenchmen, by your
cowardly Flight from your own natural Countries, have
abandoned the same into the Hands of your proud, cowardly
Enemies, and have by a feigned Hypocrisy, and counterfeit
shew of Religion, placed yourselves in a most fertile Soil,
under a most gracious and merciful Prince. Who hath been
contented, to the great Prejudice of her own natural Sub-
jects, to suffer you to live here in better Case and more
Freedom, than her own People. — Be it known to all
Flemings and Frenchmen, that it is best for them to depart
out of the Realm of England, between this and the 9th of
July next. If not, then to take that which follows. For

40 INTRODUCTION

that there shall be many a sore Stripe. Apprentices will rise,
to the number of 2336. And all the Apprentices and
Journeymen will down with the Flemings and Strangers.'

Num. cviii.

A Rhime set up against the Wall of the Dutch Church-
yard, on Thursday May the $th, between Eleven and Twelve
at Night. And there found by some of the Inhabitants of that
Place ; and brought to the Constable, and the rest of the
Watch. Beginning,

Tou, Strangers, that inhabit in this Land,
Note this same Writing, do it understand.
Conceive it well, for Safe-guard of your Lives,
Tour Goods, your Children and your dearest Wives.

The Court, upon these seditious Motions, took the most
prudent Measures to protect the poor Strangers and to
prevent any Riot or Insurrection: Sending for the Lord
Mayor and Aldermen; resolving that no open Notification
should be given, but a private Admonition only, to the
Mayor and discreetest Aldermen. And they not to know
the Cause of their sending for. Orders to be given to them
to appoint a strong Watch of Merchants and others, and
like handicrafted Masters, to answer for their Apprentices
and Servants Misdoing. The Subsidy-Books for London and
the Suburbs, to be seen : how many Masters, and how many
Men, and of what Trades, and if they use double Trades.
The Preachers of their Churches to forewarn them of
double Trades. And such as be of no Church to be avoided
hence. And a Proclamation of these Things to be made
publickly in Guild-Hall.

After these Orders from the Council Boards, several
young Men were taken up, and examined about the Con-
federacy to rise, and drive out the Strangers — Some of
these Rioters were put into the Stocks, carted and whipt; for
a Terror to other Apprentices and Servants.

MSS. Car. D. Hallifax.

II. THE HANDWRITINGS OF THE
MANUSCRIPT

By W. W. Greg

§ I. The Distribution of the Hands.

THE palaeographical study of the More manu-
script was first systematically undertaken in the
Malone Society's edition of the play printed in
191 1. The different hands in which the manuscript
is written were there clearly distinguished and the
portions contributed by each fully, and I believe
accurately, set forth1. It will not be necessary here to
do more than briefly summarize the facts.

The manuscript contains six different hands, ex-
clusive of that of Edmund Tilney, the Master of the
Revels, who, as censor, made certain notes and altera-
tions and is probably also responsible for a few
marginal marks. These hands the edition designates
as S, that of the scribe of the original play, and A, B,
C, D, E, those in which the additions are written.
I shall use the same symbols in the following dis-
cussion, but shall for convenience use each to desig-
nate indifferently the handwriting or the scribe that
wrote it.

S is responsible for the whole of the original fair
draft of the play so far as it has survived (one or more
leaves are missing after folio 5 and again after folio 1 1)
but took no part in the revision. He wrote a well-

1 On p. 67 the head-line inadvertently gives the hand as B
instead of A, and at p. xviii, 1. 28, C is a misprint for B.

42 THE HANDWRITINGS

formed and very regular hand with almost meticulous
care, but it is distinctly of a literary rather than a pro-
fessional type. The duplicate endings (the last nine
lines were cancelled and rewritten in an expanded
form) show that the writer, if not the author himself,
at least worked under his immediate supervision. On
the other hand, in 1. 1847, the reading 'fashis', cer-
tainly a scribal error for 'fashio', is a mistake with
which it is difficult to credit an author transcribing
his own work. The few incidental alterations do not
seem to afford evidence either way.

A writes nothing but folio 6a (verso blank), which
is clearly inserted in the wrong place. The addition
belongs to scene xiii and is apparently intended to
replace 11. 1471-1516 on folio 19% but it has never,
it would seem, been definitely incorporated. It is un-
questionably an author's draft, alterations being made
currente calamo. It is in a general sense parallel to the
original passage and borrows its first line therefrom,
nor can I, for my part, detect any clear difference of
style. Moreover, it is worth remark that one reason
for the substitution would seem to have been the
presence of an attack on 'the Prince' which might
certainly be considered offensive, and that a some-
what similar though milder passage also appears in the
revised version and is again cancelled.

B, an ill-formed current hand, appears in several
additions of different sorts in different parts of the
play. It is first found filling folio 7% the first page of
an elaborate insertion which replaces a considerable
section of the original draft. B's contribution is a
slightly expanded version of the original scene iv
which has been cancelled. Apart from such di-
vergencies as would inevitably be introduced by a

OF THE MANUSCRIPT 43

very careless scribe, the revision differs from the
original mainly in the clown's part, the introduction
of which appears to have been the motive of the sub-
stitution. This part is evidently the original com-
position of B, for he has added speeches by the same
character subsequently, namely in the margin of
scenes vi and vii (folios ioa— ua), but the slavish
manner in which the rest is copied hardly suggests
an author revising his own work1. Except for the
marginal additions just mentioned, we do not meet
B's work again for certain till we come to folio 16,
which is entirely his. Here the first 67 lines form an

1 The apparent improbability of the whole scene being tran-
scribed, and so roughly transcribed, for the sake of introducing
these few very poor speeches, has led to the suggestion that in
this page we have the original draft of the scene in question
substituted by the irate author for S's fair-copy, because the
latter had ventured to suppress his vapid clown's part. This
ingenious theory I feel bound to reject on various grounds. It
is perhaps no strong objection that the revised scene is crowded
onto one side of a leaf of paper, the verso of which was origin-
ally left blank. But on literary grounds alone it seems to me
fairly clear that the clown's part is a later insertion — note the
awkwardness of anticipating Lincoln's question in 1. 57 — and
this view is confirmed by other considerations, for while there
are no less than seven alterations made in the clown's part in
the course of composition, there is not a single one in the rest
of the scene. Further, it is difficult to suppose that the author
in originally writing the scene would have fallen into the error
of giving the speeches beginning at 11. 42 and 51 to Lincoln.
The second of these blunders the writer himself noticed and
corrected, but the earlier remained till altered by the substitu-
tion of the name 'Wiilia' by C in the course of the general
revision. Both speeches are correctly ascribed by S. As to the
motive for transcribing the whole, it should be observed that
there is not very much room for insertion on folio 5b and also
that the insertions and substitutions are more extensive, especially
at the beginning, than those in scenes vi and vii.

44 THE HANDWRITINGS

addition at the end of scene ix of the original. This
differs markedly from the earlier insertion, being
throughout the original work of an author composing
as he wrote : there are a number of alterations made
currente calamo, and note that the speakers' names
were added later, for II. 21—35, which were cancelled
as soon as written, are without them. Again, I cannot
say that I detect any difference of style between the
original scene and the addition. The last piece of B's
handiwork, 11. 68—73 on folio i6b, is the rough draft
of a speech, intended as an introduction to the same
original scene ix, which is found transcribed with
other matter into its proper place by C1.

C, the most extensive and most widely distributed
of the revising hands, approaches more nearly than
any other to the professional type both in caligraphic
style and in the distinctive use of Italian script. In it
are written no less than four and a half pages, two
slips, and numerous marginal directions. This last
fact, in conjunction with that already noticed, that
C transcribes a rough draft by B, points to a play-
house reviser and makes it unlikely that any of his
work is original composition. We first find him con-
tinuing the elaborate composite insertion begun by B
on folio 7*. On the verso of this leaf C writes a scene
of which there is no trace in the original as it now
stands, and at the foot of the page adds the stage-
direction for another scene, which is then written by
D on folios 8-9. In C's scene there are a few altera-

1 Hand B should be compared with that of The Captives, &c,
MS. Egerton 1994 (fols. 52-95) at the British Museum, which
is presumably Thomas Heywood's. There is a considerable
resemblance both in the writing and the spelling, but there are
also differences which make it impossible to venture on an
identification.

OF THE MANUSCRIPT 45

tions but not of a kind necessarily to imply authorship.
C edits D (as he edited B) throughout his three pages,
adding several of the speakers' names and apparently
supplying half a line in one place. Subsequently C is
found writing folios 1 2a, 1 2b, 1 3a and the top half of
1 3b. These three and a half pages contain a revision
of scene viii, the original version of which is only
partly preserved. The whole has been re-arranged,
and a good deal has been rewritten, the Falkner-
Morris portion being recast in prose. It is pretty
clear, I think, that this revision was- not the work of
the original author, but neither is there any reason to
ascribe it to C, whose slips appear to be those of a
copyist rather than a composer. After these three and
a half pages had been written, and folio 1 3b com-
pleted by E, C fitted them into their place, supplying
head and tail links on slips pasted on to the cancelled
original pages, folios ub and 14A Of these, the
second, as we have already seen, begins with some
lines transcribed here by C from a rough draft by
B. Whether B was the author of the whole link is
uncertain, though it seems likely: that C was not
appears from an evident error of transcription in 1. 20.
D, the hand that writes three pages (folios 8a, 8b,
and 9a — o,b being blank) completing the composite in-
sertion begun by B and C, supplies a revision of the
beginning of scene vi, the original version of which is
almost entirely lost. It is without question the hand
of an author composing as he writes, probably with
great fluency. The writing is in some respects careless
and impatient: speakers' names are omitted or mis-
written, and in one place, after complicated alteration
and deletion, the passage was left in such a tangled
state as to call for C's intervention.

46 THE HANDWRITINGS

The work of E is confined to the lower half of
folio 1 3b, on which he added an extension of the
revised version of scene viii. There is not very much
point in this supplement, which looks as though it had
been added rather to fill up the blank half-page than
for any weightier reason, a fact suggesting that it may
well be an after-thought by the writer who effected
the revision to which it is appended. The style appears
to be identical. There is nothing to prove the addition
autograph, but if we assume C's contribution to be a
transcript it is natural to suppose that E is the hand
of the revisional author.

The general lines of distinction between the six
hands are quite clear, and I believe that the foregoing
account may be accepted as correct. At the same time
it is only fair to add that brief marginalia and altera-
tions can often be only conjecturally assigned, and it
must not be supposed that the identifications proposed
in the Malone Society's edition are by any means all
equally certain. Particularly it should be mentioned
that hands C and D were once believed to be the
same, and that although the weight of palaeographical
authority is at present certainly against this view, it has
not yet been universally abandoned.

I am anxious not to lay any undue stress upon the
evidence of authorship that can be deduced from
handwriting, but I think that the following con-
clusions in regard to the additions are at least plausible.
A is an author revising his own work. B on folio 7a
(scene iv) is transcribing with small original additions
the work of another writer; on folio 16 (scene ix) he
is making an addition to a scene originally written by
himself. C is a transcriber only, copying on folio 7b
a new or revised scene by an unidentified author, on

OF THE MANUSCRIPT 47

folios 1 2a, 1 2b, 1 3a and part of 1 3b a revision by E of
an original scene (viii) by some other writer, and on
the slips (folios 1 i*b and i#*a) links to the same scene
written at any rate in part, and perhaps wholly, by B.
D is a writer producing an entirely new version of a
portion of scene vi originally written by the same
author as scene iv. E is a writer making an addition
to his own revision (transcribed by C) of another
author's original scene viii. It follows, of course, if
these inferences are correct, that the original version
in hand S is not throughout the composition of a
single author. This is a view that has lately been
urged with considerable force by Mr Oliphant, whose
work I shall have further occasion to mention.

Of the six hands under discussion, four can with
greater or less confidence be identified with those
either of known authors or of known documents,
while the remaining two, A and B, are sufficiently
individual to allow a hope that they too may be
identified when the hands of the period come to be
more widely studied. Meanwhile, we must be con-
tent with knowing that S is the writing of Anthony
Munday and E of Thomas Dekker, that C also ap-
pears in certain dramatic 'plots' belonging to Lord
Strange's and the Lord Admiral's companies, and that
D may perhaps be the hand of Shakespeare himself.

§ 2. The Identification of Hands S, E, and C.

When discussing the hands in the Malone Society's
edition of More, I came to the conclusion, for a reason
already indicated, that the hand (S) in which the whole
of the original fair draft of the play is written, was
that of a scribe merely, that is of someone who was

48 THE HANDWRITINGS

not himself the author of any part of it. Within a
year the late J. S. Farmer issued a facsimile of the
manuscript of John a Kent and "John a Cumber^ a play
then in the possession of Lord Mostyn, which was
seen at a glance to be in the same hand S of More.
This play bears at the end the signature 'Anthony
Mundy' and proved on investigation to be autograph
throughout. The fact that Munday was well known
as a dramatic author of course made the suggestion
that in More he played the part of a mere scribe un-
reasonable, and in announcing the discovery in the
Modern Language Review for January 1 9 1 3 I cer-
tainly assumed him to have been the author of the
original text, though I did not actually make the
assertion. The inference was perhaps a natural one,
but is not therefore to be excused, for it is clear that
at most the facts established that Munday was at
least part author. In the case of a piece written by
several playwrights in collaboration it is likely that
one of them would be charged with the task of pre-
paring the fair-copy. Fortunately the error in my
assumption was detected by Mr E. H. C. Oliphant,
an ingenious Australian scholar, who, working on the
hypothesis that more than one style was traceable in
the original draft, published an interesting analysis of
the play in the Journal of English and Germanic
Philology for April 1919, which may very likely be
on the right lines, even if it should need modification
in detail.

The inference as to authorship was not the only
mistake I made in drawing attention to the identity of
handwriting in More and John a Kent. At the end of
the latter play appears the fragmentary inscription
' . . . Decembris 1596', concerning which I made the

OF THE MANUSCRIPT 49

fortunately guarded remark: 'I am by no means
certain that the date at the end of the play is auto-
graph, though it is probably contemporary.' How-
ever, if the date is not autograph — and it probably is
not — though we can, of course, say that the play was
presumably not written after that year, it need not be
contemporary except within wide limits. The im-
portance of this lies in the fact that Munday's known
autographs can be arranged in a chronological series.
They are John a Kent, Sir Thomas More, and the
preliminaries to his Heaven of the Mind, dated 22
December 1602, in Additional MS. 33384 at the
British Museum. In the style of the writing More
resembles each of the others more closely than these
do one another, and must therefore occupy an inter-
mediate position; while, John a Kent being not later
than 1596 the order must be that given above.
Relying on 1596 as approximately the date of the
earlier play, I formerly suggested 1 598-1 600 as that
of More, but since 1 596 is really only a downward
limit the date inferred from it can, of course, be no
more.

The fallacy was pointed out by Sir Edward Maunde
Thompson in a contribution to the Bibliographical
Society's Transactions (19 1 9, xiv. 325)on 'The Auto-
graph Manuscripts of Anthony Mundy,' in which,
by means of minute palaeographical analysis, he was
able not only to demonstrate the identity of the hand
and the order of the manuscripts, but to suggest the
relative length of the intervals that separate them,
holding that 'while More is in a general sense inter-
mediate between the other two MSS., it lies much
closer chronologically to the earlier one.' It is very
gratifying to find my perhaps hasty conclusion as to

50 THE HANDWRITINGS

the order of the manuscripts thus confirmed by a
veteran palaeographer, and what he says concerning
the relative intervals certainly accords with my own
feeling on the subject. At the same time I am bound
to say that the four pages written in 1602, doubtless
at a sitting and in circumstances of which we are
absolutely ignorant, afford rather poor evidence of the
general character of Munday's hand at that date. Sir
Edward proceeded to suggest, not however on purely
palaeographical grounds, that "John a Kent may have
been written about 1590 and More about 1592—3.
These dates are certainly consistent with the evidence
of handwriting, and may very possibly be correct;
still I cannot feel, and I do not think that Sir Edward
would himself maintain, that they rest on any very
secure foundation.

But though certainty may be unattainable, specula-
tion is not therefore idle, and it may be worth in-
quiring whether, assuming the 1602 autograph to be
typical, the date of 'John a Kent must necessarily be
placed before 15961. The two hands certainly differ
to a marked degree, but I do not think, allowing for

1 In the case of so voluminous a writer as Munday there
seems a good chance of further autographs coming to light,
which may help to establish the character of that of 1602. I
should like also to say that, while there is at present nothing to
suggest that the date on John a Kent is autograph, I do not
myself consider the suggestion as impossible as Sir Edward
seems to think. The signature of the 1602 manuscript is
clumsily written in what Sir Edward calls Munday's pseudo-
Italian hand, while that at the end of John a Kent is in an ornate
and flowing script which bears not the smallest resemblance
to the other. But many writers had more than one style of
signature, and there is no reason to doubt that in both instances
Munday's name is autograph. In that case he was able, at least
at the beginning of his career, to write a caligraphic style
absolutely different from his ordinary hand, and I see no reason

OF THE MANUSCRIPT 51

the rapid development of a hand in constant practice
(a point on which Sir Edward lays stress), that we can
safely say that the change is greater than could have
taken place in the six years from December 1596 to
December 1602. At the same time More certainly
resembles the earlier hand much more closely than it
does the later, and it is probably safe to say that, unless
the writing of the 1602 manuscript is abnormal,
More cannot well be later than 1597—8, and that
should John a Kent prove to be before 1596, as it
well may, a correspondingly earlier date must be
assigned to More.

What has just been said applies, of course, to the
original version of the play as written by Munday.
But greater interest attaches to the question of the
date at which the revision took place, and before
passing on it is desirable to point out that, whenever
Munday may have performed his part, an early date
for the additions is somewhat discountenanced, though
not disproved, by another line of argument suggested,
but not fully developed, by Sir Edward. The two
plays clearly once belonged to the same company, for
they must have been bound at the same time since

to suppose that he was incapable of producing the exquisitely
written date, had he set himself to do so, though I do not
suggest that there is any reason to suppose that he did. (Com-
pare the account of Dekker's hand below, p. 53.) I should add,
however, that while the signature seems in the same ink as the
text, that of the date is different, which makes it pretty certain
that it was a later addition. In connection with Munday's
signatures it may be remarked that the one reproduced in
Collier's English Dramatic Poetry (183 1, III. 92, 1879, 11. 474)
is not autograph but a forgery clumsily copied from a
memorandum by Dekker found among the accounts of Philip
Henslowe. Though Munday is frequently mentioned in the
famous Diary, his hand does not now appear in it.

4—2

52 THE HANDWRITINGS

portions of the same leaf of a thirteenth-century
manuscript were used, and the covers were inscribed
with the titles in the same theatrical hand1. Moreover,
the very similar manner in which the two manu-
scripts have suffered from damp 'leaves little room
for doubt that thev must at some period have been
laid aside together, in close contact with each other,
and so remained undisturbed perhaps for years.' It is
natural to suppose that it was during this period of
neglect that the last leaf of John a Kent suffered the
mutilation which has deprived us almost wholly of
the end of the play, and in that case the dated in-
scription, which has shared in the damage, must, of
course, have been made before the play was laid by.
But the most natural 'cause of the neglect of the MS.
of Sir Thomas More^ in which its companion John a
Kent was also involved,' would be its rejection — in
revised form if my view is correct — by the censor.
This then would point to the rejection and probably
the revision likewise having taken place in 1596 at
earliest. The argument, however, will clearly not
bear pressing, for even supposing that the fortunes of
the two manuscripts were as closely bound up with
one another as Sir Edward plausibly assumes, it is, of
course, not impossible that they may have knocked
about in the chests of the company for some years
before being consigned together to their 'damp
limbo2.'

1 See below, p. 56.

- If it could be shown (as is not improbable) that the date
December 1596 was that at which John a Kent passed out of
the hands of its theatrical owners, the fact that the manu-
script was then perfect and that it appears to have suffered in
company with More would indicate 1596 as the downward,
though not the upward, limit for the revision of the latter play.

OF THE MANUSCRIPT 53

That hand E was that of Thomas Dekker I never
myself doubted, though the fact that I was unable to
convince Sir George Warner of the certainty of the
ascription induced me to refrain from positive asser-
tion in the Malone Society's edition. It is pleasant to
find that Sir Edward fully endorses my conjecture.
So far as I am aware the only other examples of
Dekker's handwriting of approximately the same date
that survive are a number of short memoranda which
he wrote in Henslowe's Diary1. They are as follows:
30 January 1598/9, acknowledgement of a loan of
£3. 10s.; 1 Augusti599,acknowledgementofaloanof
£1 ; 10 May 1600, receipt for £3 in part payment of
a play2; 5 May 1602, acknowledgement, jointly with
Munday, of a debt of £$; there is also a signature of
19 December 1599. Dekker's hand varied widely.
The signature is always in a flowing Italian script,
which is also used throughout the first entry (that of
1598/9) and for the writer's name in the body of the
second (1599). The bulk of the entry of 1602 on the
other hand is in a bold English script, including the
writer's name (the entry was not signed or more

1 One of these, that dated i August 1599, has been removed
and is now preserved in the British Museum, Additional MS.
30262, fol. 66b. A letter at Dulwich from Dekker to Alleyn,
dated 12 September 1616, is too late for useful comparison.
The text is in English script, the signature in Italian, both
easily recognizable in spite of the lapse of time. In another
letter, undated but of the same period, the signature alone is
autograph.

2 The entry, which is in Henslowe's hand, is subscribed: 'by
John Day to the vse of Th Dekker Harry Chettle and himselfe'.
Of this the first seven words are in one hand, presumably Day's,
the remainder in another, probably Dekker's. This at least was
Collier's view, and I now think that I was wrong in rejecting
it in my edition of the Diary.

54 THE HANDWRITINGS

likely the signature has been cut away). All the rest,
namely the entry of 1 600 such as it is, and the dates
of those of 1599 ana* x6o2, together with Henslowe's
name in the same, is in an Italian script, but one of
a much clumsier type, not unlike what Sir Edward
calls Munday's pseudo-Italian hand. Of Dekker's
addition to the More manuscript the text is English,
the speakers' names and directions pseudo- Italian.

The main interest of the entries lies in the possibility
of tracing a progressive change in the English script.
It is rather a subjective matter, but I seem to detect a
certain development in breadth and flow as well as in

pressure between August 1599 and May 1602 and a
similar development between the writing in More and
August 1599. There is, however, nothing to suggest
that the More addition need be earlier than about
1597. Possibly, had the entry of 1598/9 been English,
it might have helped towards a more definite con-
clusion.

One other point, however, is worth mention. The
loan of £3. 1 OS. recorded on 30 January 1 598/9 was for
the purpose of discharging Dekker from the arrest of
the Chamberlain's men (Diary, folio 53). From this
we may reasonably infer that he had quarrelled with
that company, but also that he had had relations with
them at no very distant period. He is first known to
have written for the Admiral's men for certain on
8 January 1 597/8, and from this date he was kept for
some years pretty constantly employed. We may,
therefore, take 1597 as tne latest year ln which he
can have been working for the Chamberlain's com-
pany. Munday is heard of in connection with the
Admiral's men about the same time, his first payment
being just before Christmas 1597.

OF THE MANUSCRIPT 55

Hand C I originally assigned to a playhouse re-
viser. Of this we now have further evidence. It
appears, namely, that the same scribe also wrote the
'plot' of the Seven Deadly Sins preserved at Dulwich1
and likewise a fragmentary 'plot' of an unidentified
play in the British Museum (Additional MS. 10449,
folio 4). Of these, the former belonged to the
Strange-Chamberlain company and probably dates
from 1 59 1 at latest. The fragment, though the play
to which it relates is not known, must from the cast
have belonged to the Admiral's men and can, I be-
lieve, be dated as certainly before 1 6 November, and
perhaps before 13 March, 1598, for reasons which I
hope to publish shortly-. It follows that C, whoever
he may have been, left the one company and joined
the other probably between the beginning of 1591
and the end of 1597. There was a reconstruction of
the Admiral's company in October 1597, and this
may have been the occasion of his joining it. At the
same time it is conceivable, though not, I think,
likely, that the fragmentary plot may be earlier than
this. If so, it would be reasonable to throw back C's
migration to a considerably earlier period, and this is
in any case quite possible. For there existed during
the difficult years 1590—3 some close though rather
obscure association between the two companies con-
cerned, and it is tempting to imagine that C, originally
a servant of Lord Strange, may have attached himself
to Edward Alleyn and the Lord Admiral's men when
the two companies started on their independent
careers in the spring of 1594.

1 There is a facsimile in W. Young's History of Duliakh
College, 1889, 11. 5.

2 In an essay on the Battle of Alcazar for the Malone Society.

56 THE HANDWRITINGS

Each 'plot' was superscribed with the title of the
play in large gothic letters partly surrounded with
rough pen ornament. The writing and still more the
ornament enable us to identify the similar super-
scriptions on the vellum wrappers of "John a Kent and
More as being likewise written by C1. Unless I am
mistaken C also wrote a few hasty directions in the
margins of 'John a Kent.

Hand D having been allotted for special treatment
to Sir Edward Maunde Thompson, it only remains
for me to summarize the evidence for the date of
the manuscript as a whole which I have been
able to find. It will have been noticed how per-
sistently different lines of argument point to 1597 as
the terminus ad quern alike for the original draft and
for the additions. This date may then, I think, be
accepted as reasonably certain. But there is nothing
to prevent the additions, and still more the original,
having been written several years earlier, or to con-
flict in any way with the date 1593-4 proposed in
Mr Pollard's Introduction.

1 Sir Edward remarks that the titles are 'not, apparently, in
one hand, but in the same style.' I do not understand his
hesitation.

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III. THE HANDWRITING OF THE

THREE PAGES ATTRIBUTED TO

SHAKESPEARE COMPARED WITH

HIS SIGNATURES

By Sir E. Maunde Thompson, G.C.B.

WHEN I contributed, in 1 9 1 6, to Shakespeare's
England — the work compiled under the au-
spices of the Oxford University Press in
celebration of the Tercentenary of the death of
Shakespeare — a chapter on the 'Handwriting of
England ' at that period, I ventured to suggest that
a close study of, and the resulting intimacy with, the
English hand which Shakespeare wrote might be ap-
plied with a fair prospect of success to the solution of
some of the doubtful passages in his plays. In the
subsequent study on Shakespeare's Handwritings in
which I attempted to show that the handwriting of
one of the Additions in the play of Sir Thomas More^
now the Harleian MS. 7368 in the British Museum,
is the handwriting of Shakespeare himself, I sub-
mitted an examination of the six surviving authentic
signatures of the poet, and also of the handwriting of
the Addition, in support of my contention. It has
now been suggested that it would be of use to Shake-
spearian scholars if I were to analyse and compare still
more closely the individual letters of these writings
and record the results of such further study, and at the
same time notice how imperfect and hurried writing
may have affected the normal shapes of the letters and

58 THE HANDWRITING

have led to confusion and misinterpretation, and how
the grouping and linking of certain letters may have
been misunderstood or misapplied. I have accordingly
here attempted to follow this suggestion in a way
which may be practically useful, accompanying my
remarks with drawings of the letters and combinations
referred to.

It will be convenient first to state briefly the
position I have already taken up in regard to the six
surviving signatures of Shakespeare, and to the three
foolscap pages which contain the Addition to the play
of Sir Thomas More, the composition of which has
been ascribed to Shakespeare and which I have con-
cluded to be in his autograph.

Shakes-pearls Signatures

The six Signatures fall into two groups, of three
in each group. The first group consists of signatures
subscribed to: (i) Deposition in a lawsuit, nth May
1 612, now in the Public Record Office; (2) Con-
veyance of a house in Blackfriars, London, purchased
by Shakespeare, 1 oth March 1 6 1 3, now in the Guild-
hall Library; (3) Mortgage-deed of the same property,
nth March 161 3, now in the British Museum. The
second group consists of Shakespeare's three signatures
on the three sheets of his will, executed 25th March,
1 61 6, now in Somerset House. The signatures of the
first group were subscribed when the writer was
presumably in normal health; those of the second
group, in his last illness.

All the signatures are written in the native English
hand, and were subscribed within the last four years
of Shakespeare's life, proving that at the close of his

OF THE THREE PAGES 59

career he still wrote the English hand which, in his
day, a Stratford boy would be taught at school.

There is a remarkable distinction to be noticed
between the two groups. In the signatures of the
first group the surname is written in a shortened
form; in those of the second group it is written in full.

In the first group the earliest signature (No. 1) is
that subscribed to the Deposition: Willm Shakp.. The
letter p with a horizontal stroke passing through its
stem may be read as per^ or Shakespeare may (but not
so probably) have used the cross-stroke as a general
sign of abbreviation1. In the two Blackfriars deeds
(Nos. 2 and 3) the surname is abbreviated in two
different ways, each differing from No. I. From the
manner in which he executed these two deeds, it is
evident that Shakespeare imagined that he was obliged,
in each case, to confine his signature within the limits
of the parchment label which is inserted in the foot
of the deed to carry the seal, and not to allow it to
trespass upon the parchment of the deed itself.

In No. 2 he has written his name in two lines (the
surname below the Christian name), at first thus:
William Shakspe, the surname ending close to the
edge of the label and having above the e a flourish
indicating abbreviation. The signature was thus in
itself complete, in a shortened form which the writer
was probably in the habit of using. But then, perhaps
doubting whether the abbreviated name would suffice,
he added the left-shouldered letter £, thus altering the
surname to Shaksper (the abbreviating flourish being

1 It is to be noticed that the method of crossing the stem by
looping it is the same as that followed in the construction of
the symbol for per or par in the Addition to the play of Sir
Thomas More.

60 THE HANDWRITING

left standing above the now penultimate letter, in-
stead of being in the proper position above the final
letter,and thus without significance). That the & is an
addition is proved by the paler colour of the ink.
Further, it was inserted with difficulty; for, while
trying to satisfy his superstition for confining his
signature to the label, on which he had left no clear
room for any addition to the abbreviated surname
already subscribed, Shakespeare was compelled to en-
croach, though ever so little, on the parchment of the
deed by writing the upper portion of the Z upon it;
yet he managed to draw back the lower half of the
letter and ensconce it within the sacred boundary1.

The Mortgage-deed is dated the day after the con-
veyance and would be executed on that day, or, if the
modern practice then obtained in dealing with a
transaction of this nature, simultaneously with the
conveyance. After his recent trouble in trying to
keep strictly to the label of the conveyance, Shake-
speare now, subscribing his signature to the mortgage
(No. 3), made sure of keeping it within limits by
writing it, in a single line, in more careful style, not
in his usual cursive writing as in No. 2, but in formal
set letters: Wm Shakspe — with the same abbreviated
form of surname which he had first employed in No. 2
before the addition of the £.

The three signatures of the first group, then, prove
that Shakespeare was in the habit of signing his sur-
name, even in legal documents, in abbreviated form,
but not always in the same form, though probably he

1 The addition of the Z was noticed by Malone, Inquiry into
the authenticity of certain miscellaneous papers, etc., 1796, p. 137
(with a facsimile of the signature), and described by him as
written 'on the very edge of the label.'

OF THE THREE PAGES 61

had a preference for Shakspe. But these signatures do
not only differ in spelling; they differ also in style of
writing. The best written signature, inscribed with
freedom, is No. i. In No. 2 the writing shows less
freedom, in part no doubt owing to confinement to
limited space, and perhaps also to another cause which
will be referred to below. No. 3 is in a formal hand
and therefore is of less value than the other two
cursively written specimens for determining the
character of the poet's handwriting; and like No. 2,
this signature also is wanting in freedom.

Turning now to the second group of signatures,
viz. the three signatures inscribed respectively on the
three sheets of Shakespeare's will (which may be re-
ferred to as Nos. 4, 5 and 6), the first two can be
disposed of in a few words. They are merely the
authenticating signatures attached to the first two
sheets. They read: William Shakspere (No. 4), and
Willm Shakspere (No. 5).

The most important signature is No. 6, being the
signature executing the will itself: 'By me William
Shakspeare.' There can be little doubt that it was
subscribed before Nos. 4 and 5. The first three words
are written firmly and legibly; but, in attempting the
surname the sick man's hand gave way. This failure
to accomplish the signature successfully after begin-
ning so well may primarily be attributed to Shake-
speare's physical condition. When the will was placed
before him, he was about to subscribe probably the
most important signature of his life. No doubt, by a
supreme effort he braced himself to the task, and,
with the sense of the formality of the occasion strong
upon him, he began to write, and to write very fairly
well, in scrivener style, with the formal words 'By

62 THE HANDWRITING

me.' Again under the same influence of formality,
he even introduced among his letters certain orna-
mental preliminary up-strokes, such as we may there-
fore almost certainly assume he would habitually
have used especially in formal scrivener's writing;
and which we find abundantly employed in the
Addition to the play of Sir Thomas More1^ but of
which we have no instance in connection with his
other signatures — and thus he succeeded in writing
his Christian name. But then he came to an obstacle;
his failing hand was evidently too weak to form cor-
rectly the difficult English S of his surname; his
effort was exhausted, and the rest of the signature was
finished with painful effort. I shall have occasion to
recur to this failure. Here it is to be noted that he
first wrote the surname in abbreviated form, Shakspe
(as in No. 3, and as, at first, in No. 2), afterwards,
however, adding the final letters are either on his own
motion, or perhaps more probably on the lawyer's
suggestion, in order to have the name in full. He then
no doubt subscribed the authenticating signatures
Nos. 4 and 5, not caring how he scrawled them, but
in both cases spelling his surname without the a in
the second syllable.

There is a notable point in connection with Shake-
speare's signatures. He generally employed the Italian
cursive long s (f) for the medial s of his surname: the
only concession that he can be shown to have made
to the new style. The native English long s ( f )
occurs in only one instance (No. 5).

1 These upstrokes in the signature No. 6 and in the
Addition are fully examined below, pp. 77-81.

OF THE THREE PAGES 63

Did Shakespeare suffer from writer s cramp?

The close of this general survey of the six authentic
signatures of Shakespeare may be a fitting place to
refer to opinions which have been entertained that
in his later years he suffered from nervous disease
which betrays itself in his handwriting. J. F. Nisbet
in his book on The Insanity of Genius (1891) con-
cludes, after examination of the signatures to the will,
that Shakespeare's ailment was a prostration of the
nervous system and that in his later days he was a
victim to nerve disorder. In March 19 19 the late
Dr R. W. Leftwich delivered before the Royal
Society of Medicine a lecture on 'The Evidence of
disease in Shakespeare's handwriting' in which he
analysed the signatures and decided that the writer
was subject to the spastic or spasmodic form of writer's
cramp. Without venturing to criticize these opinions,
I may state that independently there had arisen in my
mind, from the time when I first entered on an ex-
amination of Shakespeare's signatures, a suspicion that
he had been afflicted with some nervous complaint
which had left its mark upon his handwriting; and
I propose to explain briefly the conclusion to which
I have been led by the study of certain defects in
those signatures.

The worst instances of failure, as we have already-
seen, are in the subscriptions to the will, namely,
No. 6, the main signature, and Nos. 4 and 5, the two
authenticating signatures of the first two sheets, of
which No. 4 is too much defaced to be of any
particular value. In the general description of the
signatures I have noted that the defective writing of
these three may be primarily accounted for by the

64 THE HANDWRITING

testator's weak physical condition. That Shakespeare
was stricken with sudden illness may be inferred from
the fact that the rough draft of the will was made use
of for execution, instead of waiting for a fair engross-
ment. But the question arises whether his illness
alone is to be held accountable for his failure in the
signatures or whether there was any other contributory
cause. He succeeded in writing the first three words
of the main signature (No. 6) 'By me William' very
legibly. The letters are a little irregular in details, but
there is no sign of any approaching collapse; and to all
appearance, if his state of health was alone concerned,
there was no reason why Shakespeare should not have
written his surname as successfully as the three pre-
ceding words. It was only when he came to attempt
the capital S of his surname — a difficult letter, under
any conditions, to write symmetrically — that his hand
gave way. It failed from inability to accomplish in a
normal manner the outer semicircular curve em-
bracing the body of the letter, which leads off with
a reverse action of the hand moving from right to left.
The moment the hand begins to move leftwards to
form the base, the curve grows angular and, instead
of describing the semicircle clear of the enclosed letter,
the pen abruptly jerks upward, skirting the back of
the initial curve. Now I think that there can be little
doubt that this sudden failure was due to something
more than weakness of health, and moreover, that
Shakespeare was himself conscious of inability to con-
trol his hand when attempting a curve in reverse
action, as just described, under embarrassing con-
ditions, as in the present execution of his will; and
hence that failure was inevitable. That he was con-
scious of this nervous inability I infer from the fact

OF THE THREE PAGES 65

that in the signature No. 5 he shirks the difficult
moment of the curve by leaving a gap in the back of
the embracing semicircle. The imperfect writing of
the rest of the surname in No. 6 and of the two au-
thenticating signatures Nos. 4 and 5 I would attribute
to Shakespeare's nervous condition intensified by his
failure with the capital S of No. 6.

If, then, Shakespeare was indeed conscious, at the
time of his last illness, of a weakness in his hand-
writing, in other words that he was in his later years
subject, in some unknown degree, to a form of
writer's cramp; and if I am right in suggesting that
his failure with signature No. 6 was not altogether
attributable to illness, but also to a nervous disable-
ment in signing his name — a form of cramp which is
not uncommon with those who are affected in this way
— we should look for any indication of the growth of
the disease that may be found in his earlier signatures.

We return to the three signatures of the first
group, written under normal conditions of health, and
we will examine in each one the crucial point at which
we have seen that Shakespeare's hand failed when
executing his will — namely, the capital S of the sur-
name. That letter in signature No. 1, both in regard
to the actual body of the S and to the semicircle
embracing the letter, is formed with perfect symmetry
and evidently with a rapid and unembarrassed action
of the hand in describing the alternating curves; so
rapidly and lightly indeed did the pen travel, that the
ink failed to follow its course throughout and left only
a trace in a portion of the base-curve. Here there is
no symptom of nervous disease. The signature was
written in May 161 2, nearly four years before the
date of the will.

66 THE HANDWRITING

Ten months later, however, there exist, it seems
to me, in the crucial capital S of both Blackfriars
deeds (Nos. 2 and 3) sufficient indications of embar-
rassment to show that the writer was conscious of
weakness of hand in forming that letter of alternating
curves. It will be remembered that both signatures
were written within the boundaries of the seal labels,
and to some extent their faultiness may be attributed
to the confined space. But for our present purpose we
restrict our attention to the capital letter of the sur-
name. Taking No. 2 in hand, and comparing that
crucial letter with the symmetrically written letter in
No. 1, we see how far it is wanting in the free and
rapid movement of that example. It was evidently
written slowly, and when the pen was brought round
to effect the semicircular embracing curve, moving
from right to left, there is weakness in the curve at
the back of the letter, and again when, instead of
finishing off with a symmetrical overhead cover, the
arch of the embracing curve is brought down with a
heavy pressure, like the lid of a box, on to the head
of the letter. When Shakespeare proceeded to sign
the mortgage-deed No. 3, either simultaneously with
No. 2 or on the following day, he changed his style
of writing; but again we see even greater weakness
in the formation of the crucial capital S. The em-
bracing curve at the back of the letter is carried
upwards, hesitatingly, to a disproportionate height,
and the covering arch ends off in a tremulous stroke.
In these two signatures, then, we find a feeble and
embarrassed treatment of the capital S of the surname
and especially in the execution of the semicircular
embracing curve of the letter at the very point at
which the signature No. 6 of the will breaks down

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OF THE THREE PAGES 67

— a coincidence which, it seems, must be accounted
for by some contributory cause other than mere
temporary embarrassment, such as writing in confined
space or in the presence of witnesses.

From what has been now stated, I think that
sufficient evidence is afforded by defects in his signa-
tures to show that, in the three years preceding the
date of his death, Shakespeare experienced a difficulty
in signing his name, arising from the growing dis-
ability to control the reverse action of the hand as
above described; and as this action of the hand would
be put in motion every time he wrote the initial letter
of his surname, that letter would gradually come to
be, so to say, the nerve-centre of the disease and the
point at which his signature might break down. But
it should not be assumed that such a form of writer's
cramp would necessarily incapacitate him from fluent
practice of the pen in an ordinary way, as in literary
composition written at leisure and free from external
disturbing embarrassments. It may have affected only
the writing of his signature, and even then, possibly,
only under conditions which might cause temporary
nervousness and thus call into action the latent cramp
at the crucial moment.

The Addition (Z)) to the play of
'Sir Thomas More'

This Addition, the composition of which has been
attributed to Shakespeare, and which I submit is in
his autograph, consists of 147 numbered lines written
for insertion in a scene of the insurrection of
Londoners against the aliens resident in the city,
which was quelled by the intervention of More, then

5—2

68 THE HANDWRITING

sheriff. The lines fill three of the pages of two
inserted leaves (the verso side of the second leaf
being left blank); but the lines numbered 94 and 95,
the last lines of the second page, are double metrical
lines, thus written in order to finish off a speech
without carrying over its conclusion to the second
leaf. The actual number of the metrical lines of the
Addition is therefore 149. The first leaf has suffered
severely from damp, which has injured the writing;
the second leaf is perfect.

The Addition is written entirely by one hand, in
the native cursive handwriting which was still the
common character, taught in the schools and
generally used in Shakespeare's time, and not yet
superseded by the encroaching Italian cursive, which
however was making its way in England as an
alternative current hand. The English hand, cast by
the scriveners and writing-masters into a uniform
style, was the c Secretary hand ' — a term which came
to be extended to the general cursive hand which in
natural course assimilated individual modifications
and changes in the forms of letters. It is in this
freer 'Secretary hand' that the Addition is written;
subject, however, in this instance, to a remarkable
variation of style, shifting in sympathy with the
character of the composition.

I may here briefly state my view regarding this
variation of style, which I have already made known
in the study on Shakespeare 's Handwriting. There is a
marked distinction between the writing of the first two
pages of the Addition and that of the third page; the
text of the former is evidently written with speed, the
rapid action of the hand being indicated, for example,
by the unusual length of the long-shafted descending
letters and by a certain dash in the formation of

OF THE THREE PAGES 69

others. These signs of speed generally slacken in the
course of the second page, in which a more deliberate
and heavier style supervenes — a change which seems
to be coincident with the change in the character of
the composition — the change from the noisy tumult
of the insurgents to the intervention of More with
his persuasive speeches requiring greater thought and
choice of language. The full effect of this change in
the style of the composition is made manifest in the
yet more deliberate character of the writing of the
third page. Here there is a stronger contrast between
the light and heavy strokes than is the case generally
in the first two pages, and long-shafted letters give
place to others which are stoutly-shafted and even
truncated. Of these two styles of writing, it may be
assumed that the more deliberate style would repre-
sent the characteristic hand of the writer, being the
style in which he would set down his more thoughtful
scenes. There would be temporary pauses in the
course of composition and corresponding suspensions
of the pen and consequent loss in the momentum of
the writing. In scenes of a lighter nature, on the
other hand, he might be expected to compose so easily
as to inscribe line after line, with little variety, in the
ordinary scrivener's clerical style.

This liability to change of character under the
transient influence of greater or less mental effort
constitutes the most remarkable feature in the hand-
writing of the Addition; and changes in the actual
formation of letters which may be attributed to this
influence will be noted as we proceed with our
study. This sensitiveness, we may add, could hardly
have produced the result which is here so note-
worthy, had not the handwriting been of an unusual
fluency which could respond instantaneously to the

70 THE HANDWRITING

moods of the writer. He was a skilful and experienced
penman. When he is writing his scrivener's hand,
its uniformity denotes long and constant practice;
when he is writing his thoughtful author's hand,
although this is formed rather roughly and with-
out so much attention to uniformity, its flexibility
and unrestraint equally indicate full practical com-
mand of a legible and workmanlike handwriting.
In both styles he shows a disposition to play with his
pen, to exaggerate pendent curves, and to finish off
the final letters of his words in a flourish, more
especially as he approaches the end of a line; and this
tendency to flourish is more conspicuous in the de-
liberate than in the scrivener style, the pen there
working at greater leisure and the writer having, so
to say, more time to be fanciful in his calligraphy, and,
in addition to flourishing, to give greater variety to
his letters by emphasizing them with heavier down-
strokes. The letter which is most frequently flourished
at the end of a word is *>, the loop being finished off
with a curved tag terminating in a minute curl or dot.
This flourished letter is so persistentlv, though not
uniformly, used by the writer that it maybe regarded as
one of the particular forms by which his handwriting
might be identified; and it is to be remarked that it
seems to have been used in Shakespeare's signatures
to his will, though their imperfect condition leaves
its identification doubtful. The same curved flourish
is also applied to other letters, such as d or // at the
end of a word. Again, the descending bow of final y
or final A, at the end of a line, may terminate in a
fanciful flourish; or the tag which emerges from the
top of a final round s may be exaggerated into an
extended up-stroke in the air. The practice, also

OF THE THREE PAGES 71

followed by the writer, of lengthening the horizontal
stroke forming a part of certain letters, such as the
head-stroke of c or g or the cross-bar of k or t, when
any such letter stands at the end of a word, is another
similar indication of the writer's readiness to finish off
his words in fanciful style. But all such flourishes,
and also slack formation of curves in the bodies of
words which may be almost called flourishes, are not
to be counted as merely calligraphic eccentricities; for
they may also be the unfortunate causes of misreadings
of the letters or words which they affect.

Points of resemblance between the Signatures
and the Addition

I may now briefly state the points of resemblance
between the handwriting of Shakespeare's signatures
and the handwriting of the Addition, both in the
formation of letters and in other palaeographical de-
tails, which I venture to think have justified me in
my conclusion that the writer of the Addition was
also the writer of the Signatures. To attempt to ex-
tract evidence from a scanty gleaning of signatures,
the only authentic examples of Shakespeare's hand-
writing, all varying within themselves to a degree
more perplexing than usual, and three of them im-
perfectly written in illness, might appear a hazardous
undertaking. Moreover, the length of time which
separates the writing of the Signatures from the writing
of the Addition adds to the difficulties of comparison
of the documents. The Signatures were all subscribed
within the last four years, 161 2-1 6, of Shakespeare's
life. If we are to assign the Addition to a.d. 1593-4
there would remain an interval of nearly a score or

-2 THE HANDWRITING

more years during which changes may have taken
place in details of Shakespeare's handwriting. But,
notwithstanding an apparently unpromising case,
evidence has been forthcoming having a cumulative
value which, though it may not at once carry con-
viction, yet claims the right of being duly weighed.

The mere fact of any one or more letters being of
the same character in two different specimens of hand-
writing of course does not prove that those documents
were written by one and the same person. There must
be something more than bare resemblance to justify
identification — some peculiarity, some trick of the
hand, which is to be recognized as just as personal as
a peculiarity of feature or a trick of expression or
manner. The first letter in Shakespeare's hand which
satisfies the condition of possessing a peculiarity which
may be regarded as personal is the open a, linked with
the A, in the surname of signature No. i. This letter
(the construction of which is fully described below in
the Analysis of Letters) is remarkable in being formed
with a spur at the back, which is no essential part of it
but seems to be a personal mark of this hand1. And
when we turn to the Addition and find therein in-
stances of the open a formed with the spur, we may
regard its occurrence both in the Signatures and in
the Addition as significant evidence of identity.
Again, Shakespeare makes use in his few signatures

1 I have kept a constant watch for the occurrence of this spur
in the numerous documents of the period that have passed under
my eyes, but I have never yet observed it in any, except in
Shakespeare's Signature, No. r, and in the Addition. I have
also had the benefit of the valuable assistance of my old col-
league Mr J. P. Gilson, keeper of the MSS. in the British
Museum, who has kindly examined many collections of MSS.
on my behalf.

OF THE THREE PAGES 73

of three out of the four forms of the latter k which
appear in the Addition; and yet again various shapes
which the letter p assumes in the Addition are found
also in the Signatures.

In regard to a certain form of the letter />, I have
to record an identification which I have only recently
made and which therefore does not appear in my
monograph on Shakespeare's Handwriting. Now at
length a connection is found between the hand-
writing of the Addition and the handwriting of
signature No. 3, which, it will be remembered, is
inscribed in a set, uncursive style, and which I there-
fore could hardly have expected to see represented in
the cursive lines of the Addition. In that MS. the first
page and the first few lines of the second are filled
with the tumultuous clamour of the rioters and their
leaders and the attempts of More and the authorities
to get a hearing. The text down to this point is
written in the lighter style which I have described
above as Shakespeare's scrivener hand, and is dashed
off rapidly without a stay. But then, at line 50, the
leaders of the mob intervene with the cry ' Peace,
peace, scilens, peace ! ' — and the first three words show
a sudden change in the style of writing: they are
written deliberately, and the stress of the pen is
heavier; and two of the letters of which they are
composed are of special set forms. These two forms
are also found in Shakespeare's deliberately written
signature, No. 3. The letters are p and e. The p is
a short, truncated letter, not unlike an ordinary
printer's Roman lower-case p, having a short vertical
stem commencing with a small hook or serif on the
left, then a short horizontal cross-bar is drawn to
form the base of the head-loop, which is completed

74 THE HANDWRITING

by the addition of the necessary curve1. The two
initial p\ of the two words 'peace, peace' seem to be
the only instances of this abnormal letter to be found
in the Addition. One or two other letters bear a close
resemblance to them, but they are indistinct and are
probably only instances of the scrivener's normal
short-stemmed p. The letter e employed in the three
words is of the set form of the letter, composed of two
disconnected concave curves, which is used only oc-
casionally in the Addition. The letter e which stands
at the end of the second word 'peace' is to be noticed
on account of the flattening or extension, in a
horizontal stroke, of the upper curve, such extension
being a common feature in certain letters when
standing at the end of words in the Addition.

Now turning to Shakespeare's signature No. 3,
we find in the two final letters />£ exact replicas (1) of
the initial p of the first two words quoted above — a
short vertical stem commencing with a small hook or
serif, a horizontal cross-bar, and a completing curve to
form the head-loop; and (2) of the final e of the second
word 'peace' — a letter of two disconnected concave
curves, the upper one extending in a horizontal
stroke because the letter stands at the end of the word.

This identity of letters in the formally written
signature with letters in the formally written words
in the Addition is a further important testimony in
support of the contention that in the Addition we have
indeed an example of Shakespeare's handwriting.

We can imagine the probable course in which
Shakespeare's treatment of the scene developed and
how it affected the character of his handwriting. In

1 In fact the letter is constructed on the lines of the second
capital P of the Addition, described below, p. 107.

OF THE THREE PAGES 75

the first page he had written enough to represent the
surging tumult and wrangling of the mob; then, when
he turned the leaf and began the second page, it was
time to bring into active prominence the principal
figure in the play. And thus he opened the second
page with a few trivial exclamations. Then he
pondered on the manner of More's coming addresses
to the crowd — and, while he pondered, he wrote the
three words which have been quoted, mechanically
using his pen in slow movement and shaping his
letters in set form, just as any of us might do while
our thoughts are wandering to what should be written
next. But with Shakespeare there was but little need
for delay. He had barely scored down the three
words, when his course was decided — and his pen at
once became active again and he finished off the line
with the fourth word, not in formal set letters but in
ordinary cursive script. Thus he resumes and runs on
in the rest of the second page with his composition,
inscribing More's preliminary speeches in a style of
writing gradually becoming less formally clerical than
that of the first page, and beginning to develope the
more deliberate character which, as already explained,
finds full expression in the writing of the greater
speech which fills most of the third page.

Besides resemblances in the shapes of individual
letters, two personal usages show themselves both in
Shakespeare's Signatures and in the Addition, which
point to identity.

In the first place, at some time or other Shake-
speare adopted the practice of writing an Italian long
s (f) as the second s in his surname. This letter is seen
in three of the extant Signatures, Nos. 2, 3 and 6.
In No. 1 the second s is entirely omitted in the

76 THE HANDWRITING

abbreviated surname; and No. 4 is too much defaced
for a decision on the form of the letter. In No. 5
alone (one of the signatures to the will) the English
long f appears. This occurrence of the English letter
is curious, for Shakespeare had only just subscribed
the main signature (No. 6) to the will with the
Italian letter. It may be attributed to a mental lapse —
an involuntary resumption of a disused style. It
proves, at least, that at some earlier period Shake-
speare wrote his surname with the English long f.
His adoption of the Italian letter was probably a mere
matter of convenience, the foreign letter being more
simple and handy than the native letter which would
stand rather clumsily next to the tall letter k. The
practice of mingling Italian and English letters was
not uncommon in England in Shakespeare's day; but
this /was the only letter of the Italian alphabet that
he adopted in his signatures. It seems, then, more
than a coincidence that the only Italian letter to be
found in the lines of the Addition is the long/ —
which occurs in the word 'seriant' (1. 17, marg.) and
is added in a minute size as a correction to the word
'warre' (1. 113)1.

1 In the transcript of the Addition, printed in Shakespeare's
Handwriting, p. 95, I was led by the occurrence of a waving
stroke, between lines 102 and 103, attached to the word 'only'
in line 102, to read it as an Italian long s (f ) interpolated possibly
to convert 'only' into 'souly' (solely). I also read the third
word in line 103 (deleted by a double horizontal stroke) as 'hys,*
a pendent loop appearing to be the tail of the y. But some of
my friends, experts in palaeography, who have examined the
passage in the MS. more closely than I have had the opportunity
of doing, have given an opinion that the deleted word should
be read 'his,' and that the loop which I had taken for the tail
of a y is only part of a rambling scrawl with which the whole
surface of the word is covered; and further, that the supposed

OF THE THREE PAGES 77

The second personal usage referred to is connected
with the practice of attaching fine introductory up-
strokes to certain letters when standing at the begin-
ning of a word — a practice which seems to have been
chiefly in vogue among expert calligraphers and pro-
fessional scribes, but was also to some extent in more
general use. The writing-books of the period show
that these ornamental upstrokes were attachments to
letters in writing the 'Secretary' hand, the ordinary
current English hand of the time; and their presence
in those books, which gave in their plates the different
styles of handwriting practised by professional calli-
graphers and writing-masters, proves that upstrokes
must have been a common feature in the copy-books
of children at school. It is also in this connection an
interesting fact that their employment in writing
lessons persisted down to our own times, and that it
ceased only when the copy-book passed away as an
old-fashioned, but, for all that, a by no means useless,
instrument of popular education.

As stated above, the principal signature, No. 6, to
Shakespeare's will, written evidently with formality,
is introduced by the words 'By me'; and the m of

Italian long s is nothing more than a pen-flourish finishing off
the scrawl or one of the deleting strokes. However, it is not
agreed how the scrawl is to be interpreted. A suggestion that
it is intended for an ampersand (symbol for 'and') can hardly
be accepted, as it bears no resemblance to the ampersand of the
English hand of the period.

I venture to submit that, as it was the practice of the writer
of the Addition to use a single stroke of the pen for deletion,
while a double stroke is here employed, and as it would be
futile to write an emendation in the tangle of a deleted word, the
deletion and the scrawling are not the work of the author, but
of some would-be corrector or correctors who have not been
altogether successful in their endeavour.

78 THE HANDWRITING

'me' and the W of the Christian name are both
furnished with delicate upstrokes. Hence it may be
inferred that the employment of such ornaments was
a habit with Shakespeare — a habit which he would
have first acquired in his school-days — and that in
any written work from his hand there would be found
instances of this practice. Accordingly, in the lines
of the Addition we are not surprised to see frequent
upstrokfs attached to one or other of the amenable
letters. Yet the mere occurrence of these upstrokes
in one of the Signatures and in the Addition is not in
itself to be taken as a proof that both documents come
from the hand of the same writer. It is not the use of
the upstrokes, but the style in which they are written
that is significant and suggests identity. Of the two
upstrokes in signature No. 6, while the first, attached
to the w, is of medium length, the second belonging to
the W is remarkable in being unusually long and in
leading off with a finely-drawn narrow opening which
resembles an elongated needle-eye, a formation so rare
that it suggests a personal peculiarity of the writer;
but, leaving the consideration of this latter upstroke
for the moment, it will be convenient to turn to the
Addition and survey the larger field of upstrokes
which it presents.

The upstrokes in the Addition are fairly numerous;
but their insertion does not appear to have been
governed by any rule, but rather to be due to the
passing mood or fancy of the writer. Planted pretty
closely in some lines; in others they are sparse. The
letters to which they may be attached are /, m, n,
twin-stemmed r, v and w, when any one of them is
the first letter of a word; but there are more or less
numerous instances of omission to attach the up-

OF THE THREE PAGES 79

strokes. The two letters of which there are the largest
number of upstroked examples are w and m: the
former letter is used in the total number of lines
nearly 80 times, and only 25 of them are without the
upstroke; and of m^ out of more than 60 instances, not
a third part are unprovided. On the other hand, out
of some 40 examples of «, little more than a third
part have the upstroke; and, of the more limited
examples of/', r, and v, those with, and those without,
upstrokes are practically equal.

Most of the upstrokes of the Addition are of a
simple character, that is to say, they are delicately fine
strokes carried up obliquely by a single action of the
pen. But they vary in length : being in some instances
short, more generally of medium measurement, and
occasionally of exaggerated dimensions. This tendency
to lengthen the upstrokes beyond normal limits has
effected a change from the simple stroke. Uncon-
sciously, no doubt, the writer began to feel the need
of getting some support for the lengthening strokes,
something to give an impetus to the extended upward
motion of the pen; and accordingly we find this relief
secured by the introduction of an auxiliary quick pre-
liminary downstroke which, starting first, catches
the upstroke, forms in conjunction with it a barb,
right or left, as e.g. in 'is' (I. 62), 'moore' (1. 45),
'must' (1. 130), 'nor' (1. 136), 'rebell' (1. 114), 'un-
reverent' (1. no), 'with' (1. 51), 'weele' (1. 142), and
imparts the desired impetus. A further developement
takes place when the auxiliary downstroke happens
to fall on the very path to be occupied by the upstroke
and is actually covered by it as the latter travels in
upward course: a combination which is betrayed by
the thickening or intensifying of the stroke, as in

80 THE HANDWRITING

«> 0- 55), r (I. 56), w (I. 74), m (1. 89), m (I. 90),
t (1. 95), w (1. 108), «; (1. 125), n (1. 144). But it
might happen that the upstroke in its course would
deviate at some point and thus fail to cover some part
of the underlying auxiliary downstroke, and in fact
leave exposed a space shaped like the elongated needle-
eye noticed above in the second upstroke of the
signature No. 6. Such a failure and its result would
indeed be a rare occurrence. But, by a happy chance,
it does occur in a single instance in the Addition, in
the upstroke attached to the n in the word 'needs'
(I. 130)1 where we see the creation of an elongated
needle-eye exactly similar to that in the signature.

Is it reasonable to imagine that two different
writers should possess the same trick or turn of the
hand which could thus produce two instances of a
figure so identical in form in two separate documents?

To return to the two upstrokes in signature No. 6,
it will be noted that, apart from the remarkable in-
stance of resemblance just referred to, which may
indeed be considered sufficient to identify the writer
of the Addition with the writer of the Signatures, the
same delicate style is maintained in both documents.
It is also a curious coincidence that m and w, the two
letters which, as we have seen in surveying the up-
strokes in the Addition, are, of all the amenable
letters, those most subject to have the attachment of
upstrokes, should happen to be the two letters carrying
upstrokes in that signature. Of course the use of an
upstroke in conjunction with a capital is irregular;
but it is quite evident that in this instance, it may be
from forgetfulness or confusion of mind in his weak
state, Shakespeare did proceed (might it be caused by

1 See Plate IV.

PL \ IT V

a_ aaj-cl

2k c^- U. La. 0- 6w. J»- ^ L\* <a-

r \ -5- t- -r t- i- -r- rv>-

Or <y or <- ^ L^^^/j

Ifllftf. f f f fft

j8<~Jp- J^r fa >J> ^

(III a JUL it Siyftt(,)3Lw&i+)fyv) £1 (6))

Nil, SMALL LETTERS OF THE SIGNATURES AND THE

PLATE VI

ynv- /Ut 'hj

6^ ^uu 9uO J L 7 ■

"Vv "Vv Av Vv V) -Vi A*) &uj <S>-mJ 9\J

5O0OD0 o o "Yo -o %6 p-o "y iA

XT yu- ■U-' \/ -yt- .^r ^ *T V*

VT "Vv vv vV "fY Wy»r Si.q. ["•£(!) ^ (*; ^.^ -i- (t>)~\

u. i-c» to m-
1> 13 13

2^ i/"^

Vo Vi> lo X h> 'k) Ao/vj'Vvsv^

^ViZitfr/zr^fc r,$;?'[^w]

•y^ - /i±T ^ fefrf- Ly5 & fell?- v9w =(-fcu^-&»-.

ADDITION (D) TO THE PLAY OF "SIR THOMAS MORE"

OF THE THREE PAGES 81

a subconscious association in his thoughts of m and
w as the two letters most subject to the upstroke r) to
inscribe an upstroke to accompany the capital W of
his Christian name. The long oblique stroke is carried
up far above the line of writing and stands in the air,
as if in expectation of a capital letter; but the capital
W has to be united with it at a lower level, as if the
writer suddenly found that he must ignore the portion
of the upstroke extending overhead, in order to form
the capital on the usual lines of that letter.

Analysis of the alphabets of the Signatures
and the Addition

[In the following analysis of the individual letters, both
small letters and capitals, which are found in Shakespeare's
Signatures and in the Addition (D) to the play of Sir Thomas
More, it is to be noted that the Addition takes precedence in
the descriptions, as being the more important document,
both for actual extent and for palasographical value; the
Signatures on the other hand affording far slighter material
for analysis. But, at the same time, whenever reference is
made in the general descriptions to any feature in the
Signatures, care has been taken to state clearly its prove-
nance; and further, in order to guard against ambiguity, all
notes and remarks which concern the Signatures alone are
enclosed within square brackets.

I have also found it convenient to coin two words, viz.
'pre-link' and 'post-link'; the first to define the linking of
a letter with a foregoing letter, the other its linking with a
following letter.

Letters of the English 'Secretary' hand (both small and
capital), which do not occur either in the Addition or in the
Signatures, are given in the Plates, for convenience of
reference. They are enclosed in curved brackets.

With regard to the drawings of letters which occupy

82 THE HANDWRITING

Plates V-VII, it has not been possible, with the limited
space at disposal, to do much more than to present them in
skeleton-outline. But it is hoped that this will be sufficient
to illustrate the construction of the individual letters.]

i. The Small Letters

Letter a. The letter a appears in the Addition in
several forms, which may be arranged in two groups.
The first is the group of the normal closed letter; the
second is the group of the normal open letter.

The normal closed letter is the scrivener's letter of
the period, which differs but little from the letter in
our modern English cursive hand. As a rule, it is
here neatly formed and of a broad type. In rapid or
careless writing, however, there is a natural tendency
to leave the ring of the letter more or less open at the
top, when it may be mistaken for a u; but this im-
perfect form must not be regarded as anything more
than an accidental variety of the closed letter. There
is also in the Addition another variety, the origin of
which may likewise be ascribed to rapid writing. It
is a disjointed letter in which the ring and the minim,
instead of being written in close conjunction, stand
apart and are only held together by a top link (as in
the modern German cursive letter), the ring being
not always perfectly closed. Thus written, the letter
may be mistaken for ai or oi (see Plate IV, 11. 1 30,
131, 133). The gradual developement of this disloca-
tion of the normal closed letter may be followed in its
stages in the documents of the time. But in a final
shape it is not often found; and therefore its occur-
rence as a finished and uniform letter in the Addition
(where it appears some two dozen times, chiefly in
the first page where the writing is in the scrivener

OF THE THREE PAGES 83

style) would suggest the inference that the writer had
learned its use, as an alternative variety of the normal
closed letter, in the course of education.

It is to be noticed that there occur (11. 92, 93)
two abnormal a's (each as the indefinite article),
formed like the disjointed letter just described, but
also having a hooked forelimb which is one of the
special features of the second group. This composite
letter is found nowhere else and may be a freak of
carelessness.

The normal open letter and its varieties which
constitute the second group are more elaborate in
construction. The primary letter is open at the top,
like u, and in this respect its form does not vary.
Attached, as a kind of forelimb, to its first minim is
a tall vertical or slanting stroke, inclining to concave
curvature and either clubbed or thickened at the top,
or furnished with a preliminary bow or hook on the
left side. The clubbed forelimb usually merges at once
with the first minim; the hooked forelimb either
merges in the same way, or, more frequently, is
carried obliquely and independently towards, or quite
down to, the base-line of writing, and the two
minims of the open letter are added to its under-side,
the butt-end of the forelimb, generally finished in a
fine point, being left uncovered. If, however, the
forelimb is inclined to curvature, the butt-end may
assume a different shape, as will presently be ex-
plained.

The existence of the forelimb, which is a con-
spicuous feature in the construction of the letter in
many examples of the English hand of the Elizabethan
period, and which can be traced back to earlier times,
seems to have invited the practice, which occurs in

84 THE HANDWRITING

some hands, as it does in the Addition before us, of
linking certain letters with the open a by means of
an overhead arched link which incorporates the fore-
limb. Such linkings are ha, ma, na, pa, say ua, the
most frequent being ha; but, before noticing them,
it will be of advantage first to examine the instance
which occurs in Shakespeare's signature, No. I. For
the handwriting of this signature is on a larger scale
than that of the Addition and therefore affords a
favourable opportunity for more clearly explaining
the construction of the open a as modified by being
linked with the preceding h.

[In the Signatures of Shakespeare the closed a (not
always perfectly formed) is used, except in Nos. I and
2. In the surname of No. i the a is the open u-
shaped letter. It is connected with the preceding h by
means of an overhead arched link proceeding from
the underline pendent bow of that letter. Its con-
struction is as follows. The pen, instead of breaking
off when it had completed the finishing stroke of the
pendent bow, continues to carry it upwards, and
arriving at the base-line of writing proceeds to
describe a figure resembling a rather irregular circle
on a larger scale than that of the body of the letter:
first swerving to the left, to gain room, it describes
the left-hand half of the circumference; then, having
reached the crown of the arch where the link may
be said to have discharged its proper function, it
proceeds to describe the right-hand half of the cir-
cumference, into which it first incorporates the con-
cave forelimb of the open a and thus forms the back
of the letter in course of construction; next, having
now been brought down close to the base-line of
writing, the pen moves horizontally to the left and

OF THE THREE PAGES 85

forms a pointed projection, or spur, from the lower
end of the back of the letter, and would thus complete
the full circle but for a minute space left unoccupied
between the point of the spur and the up-risen link;
then the pen, without being lifted, moves to the right
along the line of the spur, and at its root adds the
first minim of the open a and then the second, both
minims being rather negligently formed and sloping
backward. It is important to note that it is the sus-
tained curving action of the hand in the developement
of the circle that provides room for the creation of
the spur.]

To return to the Addition: the best example there-
in of the linking of ha just described occurs in the
word 'that' in 1. 105. After making allowance for
the smaller scale of writing, it will be seen that the
formation of the open letter #, accompanied with its
spur, is exactly the same as that of the corresponding
letter in the Shakespearian signature. Other instances
are to be found, but more hurriedly written, as e.g.
'has' (1. 12), 'hath' (1. 102), 'that' (11. 117, 135),
'harber' (1. 127). The tendency to the curving action,
which seems inherent in this hand, has the effect in
many instances, both when the open a is linked with
other letters mentioned above as well as with A, and
also even when it is written independently, of
lengthening the exposed pointed butt-end of the fore-
limb in the direction of spur-formation, but in no
instance so decisively as in the linking with h.

To conclude these remarks upon the arched link-
ings of the open a with other letters, it is to be borne
in mind that such linkings are not uniformly made
use of. The pairs of letters for the most part are also
subject to linking in the ordinary way with the

86 THE HANDWRITING

common links which may unite any couples of letters.
There are also many instances in which h with its
pendent underline bow and open a with its standard
forelimb come together and seem made to invite each
other to join by means of the overhead arched link,
yet curiously remain independent; the pendent bow
hangs in suspense under the line and the unbending
forelimb is left in the air.

[An instance of this standing apart of the two
letters is to be seen in Shakespeare's Signature No. 2.
The pendent bow of the h is curved upwards but
stops short just when it reaches the base-line of the
writing, and the forelimb of the open a, clubbed at
the head and curved, merges directly with the first
minim of the letter1.]

The two forms (closed and open) of the a of the two
groups are used indifferently in the Addition; but
the open letter with the forelimb is generally pre-
ferred, and it is used more frequently than the simple
letter at the beginning of words or when it stands
alone as the indefinite article2.

It is noticeable that the writer of the Addition

1 In Shakespeare's Handwriting I incorrectly stated that the
two letters were linked, but that the ink had partially failed to
mark the full course of the link in the extension upwards of the
pendent bow of the h to join the forelimb of the a.

2 In connection with the history of the forelimb of the open
a group, there is a curious and interesting instance of its trans-
mutation, through oblivion of origin, into a conventional
symbol. It occurs in the Audit Office Revels MS. containing
a list of the plays acted before Charles I and his Queen in
1636-7, from which a facsimile is given in Mr Ernest Law's
More about Shakespeare 'Forgeries,' 1913, p. 59. Here the
scribe, using the ordinary a, marks it in almost all instances with
an emphatic acute accent, which can be nothing but a survival
of the obsolete forelimb.

OF THE THREE PAGES 87

generally observes a rule not to link a letter, which
does not naturally pre-link, such as closed #, to a letter
which does not naturally post-link, such as Z>, 0, <y, w
(which turn-in the final curve and thus present no
point of connection). But in a very few cases, when
closed a follows one of those letters, it is provided
with a very minute hyphen too small to be of practical
use: perhaps a lingering reminiscence of early school-

Letter h. The main stem of this letter is normally
provided with a well-defined initial loop, which how-
ever is not always closed and may thus become an
open bow. The main stroke should be carried down
direct to the base-line of writing and there form a
characteristic sharp point at the base of the letter,
whence the finishing curve starts; but in rapid and
careless writing this sharp base-point is lost by the
rounding of the base, as in our modern letter. That
this base-point was an essential feature in the true
formation of the letter is shown by an instance of the
letter written swiftly and loosely, in which the point
is even looped (1. 146). The base-curve is finished off
by being turned in towards the main stem, thus
causing the letter to be not post-linkable. If a link
should occur, it is to be regarded as belonging to the
following letter.

Letter c. The letter c is formed by two independent
strokes: the first vertical; the second horizontal. The
vertical should be slightly curved or hollow-backed,
sometimes beginning with a short head upstroke or
serif, and being at first firmly impressed but then
gradually fining off to a point. The curve is fairly
well maintained in the more rapid and lighter hand
of the scrivener style; but in the more deliberate hand

88 THE HANDWRITING

of the latter part of the Addition it is straightened and
is more heavily impressed. The horizontal is a finer
stroke, proceeding from the top or from near the top
of the vertical, and is generally of moderate length,
except occasionally when the letter stands at the end
of a word. In a few instances an abnormal foot is
added at right angles to the base of the vertical.

The letter pre-links at the top of the vertical; it
post-links by means of the horizontal.

Letter d. This letter is always in the round, looped
form; and the loop is almost invariably clearly written
— only rarely, when in reduced size, is it blind. The
letter is usually fairly upright; but when it follows a
tall letter, such as / or long j, the loop is generally
bent back in a more horizontal position and is
lengthened; not however after double /. At the end
of a word the letter is often finished off with a flourish
dotted at the end. This letter, when diminished in size,
and looped e when written large, are very much alike
and may easily be confused and induce misreadings.

Letter e. This letter is in two forms. The first,
which is the ordinary form, is the more cursive
looped letter — the loop reversed. The loop is usually
clearly written, but at the end of a word, and written
hurriedly, it is sometimes blind or slurred. Like d, it
often ends in a flourish and dot. Final e after k (as
in 'like') is often negligently formed, the loop being
blind or slurred and flourished. The likeness between
<^and looped e and their possible confusion have been
noticed above: see the two words at the end of lines
78, 79 (Plate III), 'braule' and 'clothd,' in which
the final letters e and d may be declared identical.

The second shape of e is a more formal letter com-
posed of two concave curves, disconnected: it is in

OF THE THREE PAGES 89

fact only a less cursive variety of the looped letter, the
connection between the curves being omitted. It is
employed only occasionally in the Addition. It
should be noted that, like the looped letter, this form
of e pre-links with the lower curve, and post-links
with the upper curve, the lower curve being written
before the upper one.

[In the Signatures, the ordinary reverse-looped
letter appears in No. 2, the loop large and clear; in
No. 3, the second shape, composed of two separate
concave curves. In the will-signatures the ordinary
letter is used, but the loop is slurred and becomes
a mere tick.]

Letter f. This letter varies in different parts of the
Addition, but it may generally be described as of two
forms: the lighter form which is prevalent in the
scrivener style of writing, and the heavier form which
is more general in the deliberately written lines.

The construction of the letter of the first form,
which is a long-shafted letter, is as follows: the full
length of the thin straight shaft is first written, com-
mencing well above the line of writing and descending
far below it and ending in a fine-drawn point; to this
the head-curve is added and is then either drawn
down and inward, like the lash of a driving-whip, so
as to traverse the shaft, and the horizontal cross-bar is
then made — all in one action of the pen; or, if the
letter stands at the end of a word (the word 'of being
the most common instance), the lash is left hanging
loose and the cross-bar is omitted. In the ordinary
handwriting of the time, the lash of final/is made to
hang clear away from the shaft and is slightly clubbed
or thickened at the end. In this Addition it is
finished off with a flourish shaped like a left-shouldered

90 THE HANDWRITING

£. The junction of the head-curve with the top of
the shaft is not always accurately closed.

The second, heavier, form of the letter has a
thickened and generally shortened shaft made by
drawing a descending stroke which starts from the
line of writing, and then carrying the pen up again
on the same stroke and thus doubling it in bulk
(sometimes carelessly looping it); next, without lifting
the pen, forming the upper half of the shaft, above
the line, and the head-curve; and lastly finishing off
the letter in the way described above, either with a
cross-bar, or, in the case of a final/, without it.

When the letter is doubled, the down-drawn stroke
of the head-curve of the first letter (which I have
compared to a whip-lash) is not drawn in to the shaft,
but is carried on to the descending shaft of the second
letter, which is then completed in the usual way, the
head-curve of the second letter out-topping that of
the first letter; and the lash of this second letter is
then drawn back to traverse the shafts of both letters,
and then the cross-bar for both letters is made in a
single finishing stroke — all by one action of the pen.

Occasionally, from failure of accuracy in the stroke,
the cross-bar gets twisted into a loop. In the case of
linked //, the head-curve of the / merging with the
shaft of the ^, a long independent cross-bar is added,
to serve both letters.

Letter g. The letter g appears in two styles, dis-
tinguished by the different methods of finishing off
the tail of the letter. The construction of the head of
the letter is uniform: a i;-shaped semicircle is first
written, the right-hand horn often projecting slightly
above the level of the other, and the pen then makes
a descending stroke to form the stem which, in the

OF THE THREE PAGES 91

one style of the letter, is carried down to a sufficient
length and is then bent back at a sharp angle, the line
being now more or less curved and being finished off
with a clubbing or thickening or minute curl; or, in
the other style, the finishing stroke is turned round
again to the right and ends in a broad curved stroke
resembling an inverted scythe-blade. The head of the
letter should be normally closed with a horizontal
line; but complete closure is sometimes carelessly
neglected. The first style of the letter is more com-
mon in the earlier and more cursively written portion
of the Addition; the second style is more prevalent in
the more deliberately written lines. The variety of
ways in which the descending limb of letter g is
treated in examples of the English 'Secretary' hand
of this period may justify us in regarding it as a letter
in which we might specially find, from its style, a
clue to the identity of the writer.

The letter pre-links by means of the left horn of
the ^-shaped head; it post-links by the horizontal
head-line.

Letter h. The letter h is the most sinuous letter in

the Elizabethan cursive alphabet1, and invites a great

variety of manipulation without essentially altering

its character. The letter normally commences with

a head-loop which usually stands well above the line

of writing, but tends, in the course of hurried writing

and especially when pre-linked, to sink more nearly

to the level of the letters in the line. The shaft is then

1 In Ant. and Chop. IV. vii. 7, Scams exclaims: 'I had a
wound here that was like a T, But now 'tis made an H.' This
is unintelligible as it is printed; but substitute for the capitals
T and H the old English cursive minuscules t (a straight-cut
letter) and h (a sinuous letter like a. mangled wound), and the
meaning is clear.

92 THE HANDWRITING

carried down below the base level, and thence bending
to the left it describes a pendent bow below the line,
and either ends there, or is carried upwards for the
purpose of post-linking. Occasionally a modified
form of the normal letter is used in which the shaft
is carried down to the base-line, and thence, as in our
modern cursive letter, springs the arch of the body of
the letter, from which the pendent bow descends.
[The h in Shakespeare's signatures Nos. I and 2 is
normal; in Nos. 5 and 6 it is of this modified form;
in No. 3 it is an uncursive letter, the signature being
purposely written in formal characters (see p. 6o).J
In other and more frequent instances the letter, by
curving the stem and then throwing off the pendent
bow at a sharp angle, assumes a shape not unlike
italic £ .

The letter pre-links naturally by its head-loop; it
post-links by its pendent bow, either in the ordinary
way by linking in the line of writing, or, if the fol-
lowing letter is open a, by means of an arched curve
carried above the line in prolongation of the pendent
bow (see the description of Letter #, above). [The
letters ha in signature No. 1 are linked in this
manner.]

Letter i. This letter plays a rather insignificant
part in the alphabet of the Addition; but it has a
certain interest for the purpose of the present enquiry.
In no position is it a conspicuous letter. At the be-
ginning of a word it is no more than of normal size;
in the middle of a word it is often reduced, in hurried
writing, to a very small scale. The letter is generally
dotted.

But the writer is inclined to vary the shape of the
letter by altering, under certain conditions, the normal

OF THE THREE PAGES 93

curved base into a pointed base, the change being
governed by the character of the link connecting the
i with the next following letter. If the link is a rising
link, requiring the pen to move upwards, the writer
in anticipation hastens to begin that movement and
so makes the base pointed. Otherwise the base should
normally be a round curve. This appears to be the
general rule; but it is to be noted that it is not con-
sistently observed.

The letter i is one of the letters to which the orna-
mental initial upstroke can be attached.

[The letter appears with both the normal curved
base and the pointed base in the Signatures which
have the Christian name more or less extended. In
No. 6 the first i linked with the double / has correctly
the curved base, while the letter linked to the a is
pointed. In the weakly written No. 2, while the
second i is likewise pointed, the first, which should
be curved at the base, is also rather pointed. The
Christian name in No. 1 is too much huddled for
consideration; and in Nos. 4 and 5 the exaggerated
point given to the i is rather to be attributed to
spasmodic uncontrolled effort. All that can be fairly
said in this particular is that, as in the Addition, so in
the Signatures, both curved and pointed bases appear.]

Letter k. This is a letter of various forms: (1) the
normal scrivener's letter, having a top-curved or
looped stem, with a horizontal base-stroke, or more
frequently a foot at right angles to the stem, and a
central loop and cross-bar attached to the middle of
the stem. This form is sometimes imperfectly or
clumsily written when it post-links with e; and in one
instance it is hurriedly written without a foot (1. 102);
(2) a more cursive form; the stem curved at the top

94 THE HANDWRITING

and itself inclined to curvature; the base round (as
in our modern cursive /) and carried up to the middle
level where a small twisted loop (often blind) is
described; the pen then moving horizontally to the
left, to reach the stem, and then to the right, thus
making the cross-bar; (3) a rare form, like No. 2,
but omitting the small twisted loop, which however
is represented by a heavy comma added in its place;
(4) the same /-formation, but the end of the base-
curve terminating in a minute bow (sometimes blind),
the letter being thus completed without a cross-bar.
This form is used chiefly in words ending in ke, as
'lyke,' 'shake/ the linked e being negligently written
with the loop blind and flourished.

[In the Signatures, the k of No. 1 is defaced by a
blot; in No. 2 (not well formed) and in No. 3, it is
of the normal scrivener's type (1); in No. 5, it is
apparently of the rare (3) type with a dot representing
the middle loop; and in No. 6 it appears to be of the
(4) type, without a cross-bar.J

Letter I. This is usually a round-backed letter; the
stem looped, generally with a well-defined loop. In
the same manner as that already noticed in the case
of letter ?, there is a tendency to sharpen the base
curve. When the / is doubled, the two letters are
often written on a small scale and the second rather
tends to be smaller than the first, and, in consequence
of the quick-curving action of the hand, they are
drawn out of their correct slope and may thus offer
occasion for misreading: e.g. 'rule' might be mis-
read 'ride.'

[Some of these characteristics are to be noticed in
the double / of the Signatures.]

Letter m. This letter is never very well formed by

OF THE THREE PAGES 95

the impatient writer of the Addition, and inclines to
angularity. When it stands at or near the beginning
of a word, the correct convexity (though angular) of
its minims is usually maintained. It often runs small
in the middle of a word; and when written in con-
nection with n or u and other letters of similar
formation it inclines to concavity, and from haste it
is not always provided with the correct number of
minims. Final m sometimes ends with a slightly
lengthened straight minim, not turned up; on the
other hand it is also sometimes concave and turned
up at the end, especially in the word ' them,' no doubt
owing to the curving impetus given to the hand by
the preceding e. The letters m and n are among the
letters to which the ornamental initial upstroke can
be attached.

[In the Signatures may be noticed the impatiently
huddled letter in No. 1 ; the m turned up in a flourish
in No. 2; and the small tremulous letter with an
accidental final tag in No. 3. The m of 'me' in No. 6
has the initial ornamental upstroke.]

Letter n. This letter generally follows the example
of m. Final rc, especially when following e, tends to
be distinctly concave and turns up with a flourish, as
in the word 'men.'

Letter 0. This is a self-contained letter. In con-
struction, the circle commences on the left side of the
circumference, the joint not being always perfectly
closed, the end of the ring even sometimes over-
lapping the commencement. As an extreme instance,
in the word 'woold,' 1. 125, the two o's resemble two
inverted r's. But generally the letter is well-formed
and is scarcely ever blind or blotted, and the circle
is fairly perfect. By its construction therefore it is

96 THE HANDWRITING

neither a pre-linking nor a post-linking letter, al-
though in practice it is linked up by preceding letters,
except the non-post-linking letters £, v, w; but in such
cases the link belongs to the preceding letter. In-
stances of unlinked words occur, as 'obay,' 'woold.'
Occasionally (as in the case of a, noticed above) a
minute hyphen stands between o and a non-post-
linking letter, such as zu, or between two o's (e.g.
' w -o o Id,' ' s h o -o Id ') ; but, as this only rarely occurs,
the presence of the hyphen may be an accidental
survival of a former, but discontinued, habit of the
writer, dating from school-days.

In the words 'you' and 'your,' written 'you' and
'yor,' the o is left open at the top and is linked with
the letter above the line. When following /, the
letter o is sometimes jammed up close to the /,
making a kind of monogram of the two letters. This
treatment of the letter, especially in short words, is
noticeable in Elizabethan handwriting.

Letter p. This letter appears in various shapes, but
they may be grouped generally in two classes. The
first is nearest to the normal scrivener's letter: the
head has a fore-limb, shaped like the figure 2, with
which the head-loop is combined and then continues
with a stem or descender of varying length, rarely
long and pointed, but usually short or very short and
curved and carried up in order to post-link. The
second class, which is in common use, has a simple
loop-head, the short initial oblique stroke being
slightly waved by pressure of the hand; the descender
carried down to some length, sometimes to great
length, often being a long dashing stroke ending in
a point or being returned to the line of writing by a
post-linking upstroke.

OF THE THREE PAGES 97

[In the Signatures the p of No. 2 is of the first
class, with a straight stem post-linking by an up-
stroke; that of Nos. 5 and 6, of the second class.]

There are also a few abnormal letters, one of
which may be noticed. It is a short, truncated,
deliberately written letter, resembling very nearly a
printer's ordinary lower-case letter p, and having a
short vertical stem commencing with a small hook or
serif on the left; then a short horizontal cross-bar is
drawn to form the base of the head-loop, which is
completed by the addition of the necessary curve.
[The letter p in signature No. 3 which is written in
deliberately formed letters, is of this type (see above,

p. 73).]

The shape of the letter p which is used in the
symbols for par or per, and for pro, is that described
here under the second class. [The^>, with cross-stroke
through the stem, in signature No. 1, belongs to this
variety; the method of crossing the stem is the same
as that followed in the construction of the symbol for
par or per in the Addition.]

Letter q. There are, in the Addition, only four
instances of the use of this letter; in one of them the
ring is open at the top. The letter calls for no other
remark, being practically of the same form as that of
our modern cursive letter.

Letter r. The normal twin-stemmed English letter,
composed of two short vertical strokes connected at
the base by a more or less arched curve, and termi-
nating at the top of the last limb with a shoulder by
means of which the letter post-links, is in general
use. It is very uniform in character, except for the
natural fluctuations of the hand. The connecting
base-arch is sometimes exaggerated and rises too high;

98 THE HANDWRITING

the two verticals are sometimes brought too closely
together; and in post-linking there is a tendency to
slur the shoulder and merge the final limb, the letter
thus resembling a lower-case n. This is one of the
letters to which the ornamental initial upstroke can
be attached.

The left-shouldered £ occurs here and there,
chiefly in the first page of the Addition, where the
writing is more of the scrivener style. This letter is
always used in the abbreviated word 'yor' [your). [In
the Signatures it is always left-shouldered. J

Letter s. There are two forms of this letter: the
long f, employed, both single and doubled, at the
beginning or in the middle of a word; and the small,
round, looped letter used at the end of a word. The
construction of the long f follows exactly that of
the letter /already described, of course omitting the
cross-bar of the latter. In the first page of the
Addition, and in the second page in a less degree, the
form prevails which is written with a lighter hand
and which produces the shaft, in full length, from
above to below the line of writing in a long pointed
stroke. The head-curve is added to the shaft by a
separate action of the pen, but in the hurry of writing
the point of junction is not in all cases accurately
closed. The head-curve, like the lash of a driving-
whip, is brought down to the line of writing and
there either post-links, or, if such post-linking is not
permissible, it is drawn back to the shaft.

As in the case of/, a second heavier variety of long
f is also employed and prevails in the third page, and
to some extent appears also in the second page. In
this variety a thickened and generally shorter shaft is
made by drawing a descending stroke from the line of

OF THE THREE PAGES 99

writing, and then carrying the pen up again on the same
stroke, thus doubling it in bulk, and then, without lift-
ing the pen, forming the head-curve and post-linking
it, or drawing it in to the shaft, as already described.

When the letter is doubled, the head-curve of the
first f is carried on to, and is incorporated with, the
descender of the second f, which is then completed as
if a single letter, the head-curve of the second letter
out-topping that of the first letter — the whole process
being accomplished without lifting the pen.

Long f post-links, by its head-curve, with certain
letters; not with others. For example, it post-links
with /, not with c; perhaps to avoid ambiguity.

The small circular .r, used at the end of a word, is
generally a fairly symmetrical round loop, the loose
end of which is left, in the air, at the top of the letter,
hanging to the right or turned back in a curve.

A long/ of the Italian type appears in the correc-
tion of a word, 1. 113; and a letter of the same type,
looped at the lower end, is in 'seriant,' 1. 17 margin.

[Shakespeare uses in most of the Signatures an
Italian long/ as the medial s of the surname, inscribed
with a slender stroke as if with the point of the pen
turned inwards. It appears in Nos. 2, 3 and 6. It is
the only Italian letter thus employed. In No. 5 he
writes the English letter.]

Letter t. There is much variety in the forms in
which this letter is written in the Addition; but they
may generally be grouped in two main classes, the
first following the normal type of the letter of the
scriveners, with variations; the second a simpler type,
also with variations. Both classes are used throughout
the Addition; but the first prevails in the first two
pages, the second in the third page.

7—2

ioo THE HANDWRITING

The more carefully formed letter of the first class
has a swaying stem, curved at the top, with a hori-
zontal foot at the base, either extending both right
and left of the stem, or only to the right; the cross-bar
cutting the stem low down, or extending to the right.
The top-curve of the stem may become looped, espe-
ciallv'when linked. A less elaborate form of this class
has the top-curve, but discards the foot, and its cross-bar
is represented by an arm projecting to the right from
near the base of the stem. This form is used very
commonly linked with h in words beginning with M,
and is usually written with a light hand. In rapid writ-
ing, a loop is sometimes made at the base of the stem.

The general type of the second class is a straight
heavy stem with an arm, representing the cross-bar,
projecting to the right from the stem, low down or
even from its very base. This style of letter is roughly
and forcibly inscribed and wants the finish of the
letters of the scrivener's type. In careless writing it
is often imperfectly or negligently written; and it also
takes a looped shape, which might be mistaken for
b or /. It is often written as a thick, stunted letter.

The cross-bar of t, when that letter is pre-linked
with for long f, is very prominent.

Letter u. The letter u (represented by v at the
beginning of a word) is written in correct concave
formation; whereas, in the cases of m and rc, it has
been shown that those letters, when written quickly,
tend to lose their proper convexity and to lapse into
concavity in the middle of a word — the action of the
writer's hand in the Addition being of the downward
not the rising, curve. Like m and n it is often
written negligently small. It was the custom of the
time to write the u of the word 'you' above the line,

OF THE THREE PAGES 101

as if the word were abbreviated; this final u tends to
be flourished: in a few instances it stands, not above,
but in, the line of writing.

Letter v. This letter is normally formed, and shows
little variation. In the early part of the Addition the
initial curve is in some instances written with a larger,
sweeping stroke. In the deliberate hand, the heavy
initial limb is to be noticed. The base-curve, being
turned inwards, offers no facility for post-linking.
To this letter and to w the ornamental initial up-
stroke can be attached.

Letter w. What has been said of v applies equally
to this letter, which in fact is constructed on the same
lines, with an added initial minim. Like v, the initial
curve is in some instances, in the earlier pages of the
Addition, enlarged with a sweeping stroke; and, like
v, this letter does not post-link. In the more de-
liberate hand of the third page the letter is of a heavier
and more roughly formed type.

Letter x. No instance of this letter occurs.

Letter y. The normal form of this letter is written
in a single action of the pen. At the foot of the initial
stroke of the hand a small upward curve or fold is
described, and thence descends the sweeping bow
under the line, which may be carried up as a means of
post-linking in the line, or, like the descending bow
of h, it may be lifted in an arch above the line. In
more hurried writing the small fold in the head is
neglected, and the letter then differs but little from
our modern cursive letter. A reduced form of the
letter is used occasionally, which is kept almost within
the limits of the letters in the line of writing; it
nearly resembles a left-shouldered &; and it might be
mistaken for that letter.

102 THE HANDWRITING

Final y at the end of a word or line is often
conspicuously flourished.

[A normal y occurs in Signature No. 6, in the
introductory word ' By. 'J

Letter z. There is only one instance of this letter,
1. 9. It is of normal type.

Abbreviations, etc.

In the Addition there are a few abbreviations of an
ordinary character (Plate VI). They are:

Omission of final », indicated by a horizontal
stroke above the penultimate letter, as in vppon
(11. 19,61).

Matie, a shortened form of 'majestie,' occurring
thrice (11. 73, 101, 121). There should be a horizontal
stroke above the word, indicating contraction; but in
two instances it is omitted, and in the third (1. 101) it
is added carelessly, perhaps by a second hand. This is
the usual contracted form of the word in use for a
Sovereign's royal title. In the general sense of the
word, we should rather have expected it to be written
uncontracted.

The letter p with the stem looped and crossed
horizontally, the symbol for the syllable par or per.

The letter/) with a curve drawn from the left side
and crossing the stem, the symbol for the syllable
pro.

A curve or hook rising vertically above the line,
a symbol for the syllable er, as in the word ever (1. 21).

A loop, in the line of writing, at the end of a word,
a symbol indicating omission generally of final es,
sometimes of s. In most instances this symbol appears
in a rather ornamental shape, not unlike a modern
cursive j, for which it might carelessly be mistaken.

PL \ I i. VII

Cfi ^ J3 $ tf % s&$4

(£■ -t£ <&- -& ^

itizftu (f

{la r) (0) jPjd {<&) (0

(B- & <£? C^

THE CAPITAL LETTERS ()I I 111. SIGNATURES AND THE
ADDITION D) TO THE PLAY OF "SIR THOMAS MORE"

OF THE THREE PAGES 103

All the above symbols were in common use, even
into the eighteenth century.

[The abbreviations in Shakespeare's Signatures
have already been explained.]

ii. The Capital Letters

The three pages of the Addition to the play of Sir
Thomas More together with Shakespeare's six Signa-
tures do not afford sufficient material to yield a com-
plete alphabet of the capital letters which we may
conjecture were made use of by Shakespeare (assuming
that I am right in my contention that the Addition,
as well as the Signatures, is in his autograph). But it
fortunately happens that the majority of the letters
are represented, namely, A^ 5, C, D, E,ffi(F), I (J),
Z,, P, 5, T, W, Y, that is, thirteen out of the twenty-
four. Thus eleven, namely, G, H, K, M, N, 0, Q,
R, (U) V^ X, Z, are wanting; but this number may
be further reduced if certain modifications are to be
admitted, as will presently be shown.

The task, then, before us is not only to analyse
the forms of the letters of which we can produce
examples, but also to conjecture the character of the
letters which are wanting. In the solution of the latter
part of the enquiry we are assisted by the fact that
Shakespeare wrote the native English hand, that he
did not write the imported Italian hand. The only
trace of foreign influence, as we have seen, is in his
adoption of the Italian minuscule /in his Signatures.
He would not therefore, like many writers of his
time, have been tempted to mingle Italian forms with
his English letters, thus composing a nondescript
alphabet. The capital letters in his Signatures are of

104 THE HANDWRITING

the English type; so too are the capitals of which we
find examples in the Addition.

An interesting point is also to be noticed in the
treatment of the capitals, namely, the facility with
which the delicate curves of such letters as E (Ad-
dition, 11. 24, 30, 31); S (Addition, 11. 24, 25, &c.)
and [Signature No. I J; and T (Addition, 11. 30, 55)
are accomplished. Shakespeare could hardly have
claimed to be a fine calligrapher, although a fluent
writer in the unrestrained scrivener style; but the
larger scale of the capital letters no doubt afforded him
scope for free play with his pen, and in the execution
of the curves referred to he shows unusual dexterity.
His hand, as a young man, was evidently naturally
firm. If we are to place the date of the Addition in
the year 1 593—4, it would have been written in about
his thirtieth year. He had then still in front of him
some twenty years of strenuous dramatic composition
and of actual hard manual labour with the pen before
his hand was to show signs of the weakness which, as
already described, is to be detected in his Signatures.

We first examine Shakespeare's extant capital
letters:

Letter A. An instance of the scrivener's formal
letter occurs in 1. 43. It commences with an exag-
gerated base-curve, which is ornamented with a
central dot; the body of the letter being an open angle
without cross-bar. A rather simpler form, without
the ornamental dot, is seen in 1. 59.

Letter B. There are two forms of this elaborate
letter in the Addition. The first, of which there are
five instances (11. 3, 37, 43, 59 and 89 margin), is
constructed by three separate actions of the pen: (1) a

OF THE THREE PAGES 105

fore-limb, shaped like a plough-share or a man-of-
war's ram, the pen commencing with a small curve
or hook and then moving obliquely to the point of
the ram and thence horizontally to the right to a
sufficient length to form the base-line of the letter;
(2) the top horizontal line is then drawn, and the pen
descending describes the two great bows, and should
then make a junction with the extreme end of the
base-line; (3) an obliquely vertical stroke, inclining to
curvature, traverses the body of the letter and repre-
sents the main stem of the B. The junction of the
lower bow with the end of the base-line is not always
accurately adjusted.

[The capital B written by Shakespeare at the head
of the words 'By me' prefixed to Signature No. 6 is
constructed on the same lines as the letter in the
Addition just described; but, owing to his infirmity,
it is malformed, and the base-line rises too high.]

The second form of the letter in the Addition
occurs in the margin of 1. 70. It commences, like the
other, with a fore-limb, but of a different pattern: a
curved bold stroke descending to the base, where the
pen adds a short connecting base-curve, and then rises
in a bold sweep to form the body of the letter with
its two great bows, all in one action. Then the
obliquely vertical stroke, representing the main-stem
of the 5, is separately added.

Letter C. A formal letter of unpretentious type,
written monotonously without much variation: a
circular spiral letter in reverse action, like a modern
cursive capital O loosely written; bisected by a
horizontal cross-bar — this cross-bar and the initial
curve being in fact the actual letter, and the finishing
curve a flourish. It is to be noted that in the portion

106 THE HANDWRITING

of the Addition written in scrivener style the capital
C is used at the beginning of words, without regard to
their position in the sentence, in preference to the
minuscule letter. On the other hand, in the more
deliberate or author's style, the small letter is more
usual. Such personal preferences are not to be satis-
factorily accounted for. It may, however, be suggested
that the capital C, a round letter, is easily written and
therefore naturally recommends itself in rapid writ-

Among handwritings of the time it is noticeable
that there was often a tendency for writers to prefer
one or another capital letter to the minuscule. This
habit might be practised to excess and might thus be-
come a means of identifying the hand.

Letter D. The formal capital is seen in 1. 13, a
sinuous letter commencing with an under-line curve
returning in a long-drawn base-line and ending in a
large symmetrical loop above the line. But a less
formal letter — a large twin-looped D, dashed off at
great speed — appears as the initial of the character-
name 'Doll' which is entered in the margins of the
Addition. This modified letter may be regarded rather
as an exaggerated minuscule than a true capital — or
at least an arbitrary capital. The same form of letter
is used by other contemporary writers.

Letter E. This formal letter occurs thrice in the
Addition (11. 24, 30, 31): a symmetrical crescent,
bisected by a horizontal cross-bar commencing with
an ornamental loop.

Letter F. Double minuscule / represented the
capital in the old English cursive hand from an early
date and was so used in the Elizabethan hand. An
instance occurs in 1. 127.

OF THE THREE PAGES 107

Letter I or J. The conventional scrivener's capital
used in the Addition is an awkwardly shaped letter
(11. 28, 35, 58, 89), beginning with a small looped
head, a stem sloped and traversed by a cross-bar and
a pendent curve below the line. There is also a simpler
letter (11. 73, 80, 99, 128, 129) having an oblique
stem looped at top and bottom. A third variety,
having a cross-bar, occurs in 1. 58.

Letter L. There is little difference between the
scrivener's normal letter and the modern looped Z,,
except that it was generally in a sloping or reclining
posture.

Letter P. A scrivener's normal letter stands in 1. 1
— a main stem beginning with a small curve and
linked with a detached limb representing the bow of
the letter, within which is an ornamental dot.
Another conventional shape is in 1. 35; a compact
letter composed of main stem, with bow attached and
enclosing a dot, crossed by a curved stroke forming
the base of the bow.

Letter S. There are many examples of this letter
both in the Signatures and in the Addition (in the
margins as well as in the text); and there is a greater
variety among them than is the case with any other
of the capital letters. The English capital S was in
fact the most difficult one of the alphabet to write
symmetrically. The two alternating curves which
constitute the actual body of the S are lengthened
fancifully by continuing the tail of the lower one and
carrying it round the letter in an embracing semi-
circle which finally forms a covering arch overhead.
The most symmetrical example in the Addition is in
the word 'Surrey,' 1. 24. There are many exaggera-
tions, written at speed, to be seen in the first page.

108 THE HANDWRITING

[Among the Signatures, the S in No. I is a perfect
example, the several curves being well-proportioned
and symmetrical. The faulty character of Nos. 2—6
has already been noticed; here I briefly repeat par-
ticulars of the capital S in each one (excepting No. 4,
where the letter is defaced). In Signature No. 2,
written on the seal-label of the deed and therefore in
a confined space, the letter is not in a free hand but
is hesitatingly formed, the rising curve at the back
of the letter seeming to creep upward and then, in-
stead of continuing in a symmetrical arch clear
above the letter, as in signature No. 1, it is shut
down flat, like the lid of a box, with a heavy hand.
Signature No. 3, written simultaneously with No. 2,
or not later than the following day, is also inscribed
on the seal-label, not in the writer's ordinary cursive
hand, as in No. 2, but in formal, set letters; and the
capital £, badly formed1, exhibits even greater weak-
ness than the letter in No. 2; and both in the back
curve and in the covering arch there is a tremor of
the hand. In the case of both these signatures a
particular form of nervousness, as already described
(p. 66), may have contributed to their imperfec-
tion. Of the signatures to the three sheets of
Shakespeare's will (Nos. 4-6) the last (No. 6), we
may assume, was the first to be subscribed. The
capital S is here badly deformed owing to the failure
of the writer's hand to accomplish the embracing
curve, first moving from right to left and then from

1 It will be seen (Plate I) that the initial curve of the S is
wanting, a defect probably due to the badly prepared surface
of the parchment label failing to absorb the ink. It seems im-
possible that Shakespeare could have omitted so essential a
feature of the letter; but he may have made it small.

OF THE THREE PAGES 109

left to right. He succeeded in forming the two
curves of the body of the letter, but when he
attempted to continue the tail of the lower curve
in the embracing semicircle, instead of moving in
the proper direction from right to left, the pen
jerked upwards in a vertical line, skirting the back of
the initial curve of the letter, and only then moving
correctly to form the covering arch: which more-
over ends in an accidental flick from the faltering
pen. The curious result of this failure is that a letter
has been produced which may easily be mistaken (as
it has been mistaken) for an ordinary Roman capital
S. In No. 5 the difficulty of the back curve has been
avoided by omitting it, a gap being left between the
extended tail of the letter and the covering arch.]

It may be noticed that in many of the examples of
the capital S both in the Signatures and in the
Addition there is a tendency to sharpen the curve
projecting to the right, with the result of suggesting
a caricature of a human chin drawn in profile. The
action of the hand in this particular is common to the
writer of the Signatures and the writer of the
Addition.

Letter T. This letter occurs twice in the Addition
(11. 30, 55). It is a refinement of the scrivener's
formal letter, being a crescent delicately shaped, with
a strong cross-stroke placed towards the upper ex-
tremity of the crescent, within which is an ornamental
dot.

Letter W. A formal capital of an elaborate kind
occurs in 1. 35 of the Addition, having a sweeping
initial curve balanced by a final curve which is
attached by a short base-curve and encloses an orna-
mental dot. Probably the initial letter of the name

no THE HANDWRITING

Watchins, 1. 59, is intended to serve as a capital,
although in formation it is rather an elaborate minus-
cule.

[In his signatures Shakespeare made use of two
forms of this capital. The more formal scrivener's
letter is that which appears in Nos. 2, 4 and 5 and has
the final limb attached to the middle stroke by a base-
curve. In Nos. 1, 3 and 6 he uses a simpler letter, in
which the base-curve is omitted. In all the Signatures
except No. 5 an ornamental dot is placed within the
curve of the final limb. In no instance is the letter
well formed. In No. 6 the W has a preliminary
ornamental initial upstroke (see pp. 78, 8o).J

Letter Y. This letter occurs once in 1. 51 of the
Addition: well written with a sweeping initial curve,
and formed on the lines of the minuscule letter.

Having now seen that Shakespeare formed the
capital letters of his handwriting, so far as examples
of such letters have been transmitted to us, generally
on the lines of the formal capital letters which were
used by the scriveners of his day in the native English
script, it is obvious that we must have recourse to the
same capital alphabet if we are to attempt to con-
jecture the character of the letters which remain un-
represented. At the same time we may suggest
modified forms, if any appear to be admissible.

Letter G. The scrivener's capital was no doubt
used by Shakespeare in its most formal shape; and
probably also very commonly the more cursive letter.

Letter H. The formal letter may be conjectured,
in which the pendent final bow is attached to the
main stem by an arched base-curve; and probably also
a simpler form in which the base-curve is omitted:

OF THE THREE PAGES in

just as Shakespeare used a capital W^ with or without
a connecting base-curve.

Letter K. The scrivener's formal letter may be
certainly conjectured, which is an enlargement of the
minuscule and would need no modification.

Letters M and N. The formal and rather com-
plicated letters of the base-curve type were no doubt
used by Shakespeare, as by other writers} but at the
same time there is reason to believe that he certainly
was in the habit of writing much simpler forms of
these two letters. For it is to be remarked that in the
Addition the names of the characters in almost all
instances begin with a capital, the most notable ex-
ception being that of More himself, notwithstanding
that he is the most prominent personage in the play.
His name is in all places written with an initial
minuscule — or, rather, what under ordinary con-
ditions would be read as a minuscular m. But it is now
a question whether the letter should be so regarded;
for there is evidence that both capital y^f and N were
frequently written, as they very commonly are in our
modern handwritings, in the shapes of minuscules,
but enlarged. To go no further afield than the other
Additions to this play of Sir Thomas More, instances
of the use of these enlarged minuscules as capital
letters are to be found by the side of the scrivener's
formal letters. An instance of this use of the enlarged
minuscule-form of M, in the hand of the writer of
the Addition C, is to be seen in this present Addition
(D) in the marginal correction ' Maior ' (1. 26). There-
fore, when we find the writer of the Addition per-
sistently employing what to all appearance is a
minuscule m as the initial letter of the important
character-name ' More,' we may hesitate to account

ii2 THE HANDWRITING

the letter at its face- value, but rather assume that it
is to be read as a capital. And indeed, every here and
there (e.g. in the margins of 11. 5$, 6i, 144) the letter
is written with some prominence, as though the
writer intended it to be something more than the
apparent minuscule. With the example of the practice
of the writers of the other Additions to support us, it
seems quite reasonable to credit Shakespeare with the
use of the enlarged minuscules m and n to do duty as
capitals, as well as of the scrivener's formal letters.

Letter R. Again the scrivener letter of the more
elaborate base-curve type, following the lines of the
second form of the letter B described above, may be
included in Shakespeare's capital alphabet, though
probably also with a simpler alternative.

Five letters remain to be conjectured. Three of
these may with little hesitation be decided as the
letters of the scrivener's alphabet, viz. :

Letters O, Q and U (V). These are not complicated
letters and offer little scope, if any, for modification.
We may assume that Shakespeare wrote them simply
in the scrivener style. The circle of the 0 is formed
in two sections and is traversed by an oblique stroke;
the circle of Q follows a similar construction in two
sections, and a simple pendent tongue completes the
letter. U {V) may be described as an ornamental en-
largement of the minuscule v.

Letters X and Z. These two letters, seldom called
into use, we may conjecture to have been of a simple
scrivener pattern.

IV. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LINKS BE-
TWEEN THE THREE PAGES AND
THE GOOD OUARTOS

By J. Dover Wilson

WHEN my attention was first seriously directed
to the problem of the More Addition, I had
already, at Mr Pollard's suggestion, under-
taken a bibliographical enquiry into the nature of the
'copy' used for the Good Shakespearian Quartos,
with a view to discovering if possible something about
the character of Shakespeare's manuscripts. At the
best, the first edition of one of Shakespeare's plays
was printed direct from his autograph; and Mr Pol-
lard has happily shown us reason for believing that
this best occurred more frequently than has hitherto
been suspected. At the worst, it was printed from a
transcript of the original. Yet even if this worst were
found to account for most of the quarto productions,
such a situation need not lead us to despair. It is
exceedingly unlikely that a copyist would obliterate
all traces of Shakespeare's penmanship in making his
transcript; and the presence of a copyist simply means
that two men stand between the printed text and the
original instead of one, viz. the compositor. Indeed,
the fact that some of the Bad Quartos, which are al-
most certainly based in part upon transcripts from an
original manuscript, occasionally exhibit passages
closely resembling their counterparts in the Good
Quartos, in punctuation, spellings or misprints, goes

ii4 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LINKS

to show that Shakespeare's pen could still influence
the printed page, even after the lines of his verse had
passed through two heads other than his own.

Lists were, accordingly, made of all the obvious
misprints (i.e. misprints which have been corrected in
all modern editions), and of the abnormal spellings
which occur in the Good Quartos. By 'abnormal
spellings' is meant such spellings as a reputable com-
positor of Shakespeare's day is not likely to have
wittingly introduced into the text himself. Many
spellings which to us seem archaic were of course
quite 'normal' at that period. Yet the spelling of
sixteenth and seventeenth century compositors was on
the whole far more modern than that of the average
author with whose manuscript they had to cope; and
withal far more consistent, since at that time spelling
differed not only from author to author, but often
from page to page, or even from line to line, in the
same manuscript. It was, indeed, this chaos of usage
which forced the compositors to be more or less
systematic; for, to set up a manuscript in type letter
by letter would have been not only tedious but costly.
Time was money, even in those days; and speed was
an important element in the compositor's skill.
Further, speed meant carrying a number of words at
one time in the head, and the head-carrying process
meant altering the spelling. Why, then, is it that
abnormal spellings frequently crop up in the quartos?
The answer is that they come, most of them, from
the manuscript; they are words which have caught
the compositor's eye. An unskilful compositor, i.e.
one not able to carry many words in his head at a
time, will naturally cling close to his 'copy,' and so
introduce a number of his author's spellings into

WITH THE GOOD QUARTOS 115

print. But even an accomplished craftsman will at
times let copy-spellings through — when he is tired, or
when a difficult passage confronts him which has to
be spelt out. Thus, by making a collection of such
abnormal spellings, it is possible to learn a good deal
about an author's orthographic habits. In any event,
when in dealing with the fifteen Good Quarto texts J,
produced by some nine or ten different printing-
houses over a space of twenty-nine years, we find the
same types of misprint and the same peculiarities of
spelling recurring throughout, it is safe to attribute
them to the one constant factor behind them all — the
pen of William Shakespeare.

Feeling that I had in this collection of misprints
and spellings a body of definite information about
Shakespearian 'copy,' I turned, as the reader will
understand, in some considerable excitement to the
More Addition. It seemed to me possible to put Sir
Edward Maunde Thompson's thesis to the biblio-
graphical test. To take a simple instance: the constant
confusion between e and d in the quartos proves that
the copy from which they were printed was in English
script, in which these two letters are formed on the
same pattern; to have found, then, that the Addition
was written in an Italian hand would have been dis-
concerting, to say the least. Or again, one of the biblio-
graphical features of the quartos is the frequent and
whimsical appearance of an initial capital C, in a way
which shows that Shakespeare's pen was fond of using
this letter in place of the minuscule. It was therefore
encouraging to note that every initial conp. 1 of the
Addition was a capital, eight out of fifteen were

1 Excluding Titus Andronicus and Richard III, as suspect,
and including the Sonnets and the two poems.

8—2

n6 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LINKS

capitals on p. 2, and four out of eleven on p. 3. Too
much must not be made of this coincidence; the C
majuscule in 'English' is a good round letter, easy to
form and distinctive, so that its spasmodic appearance
is not without parallel, is, indeed, fairly common, in
other books of the period. But the writer of the
Addition might have had a liking for another capital
(e.g. for A, which is Gabriel Harvey's favourite
letter); and it is reassuring to find he had not.
Another interesting similarity between the quartos
and the Addition has recently come to light. The
three pages of manuscript contain 147 lines: 45 on
the first, 50 on the second, and 52 on the third. The
other writers of More are more sparing of paper;
Munday averages 79 lines to a page, Hand A 71
lines, Hand B 66, and Hand C 60 ». Now, in printing
the Second Part of Henry IV Sims's compositors in-
advertently omitted a scene in some copies, an omis-
sion which they subsequently rectified. It seems clear
that the scene in question was written upon two sides
of a single sheet; and it is remarkable that it contains
108 lines, i.e. 54 lines to a page, a figure which
closely approximates to that given us by the Addition.
As Mr Pollard, to whom this discovery is due, writes
"If anyone on other grounds is already convinced
that Shakespeare was the writer of those pages and
that he wrote them not long before he wrote 2 Henry
IF, he will be pleased with the coincidence that
Shakespeare in this play and the writer of the three
pages in More seem to have put their lines on paper
in much the same rather unusually expensive way2."

« The various hands in the More MS. were thus classified
by Dr W. W. Greg in his Malone Society edition of the text.
a Times Literary Supplement, Oct. 21, 1920.

WITH THE GOOD QUARTOS 117

Taken singly, of course, coincidences like these
prove nothing; they are at best negative evidence.
But as they begin to accumulate they tend to become
impressive. And when one turns to the misprints and
spellings of the Good Quartos the accumulation of
coincidence grows very impressive indeed.

Misprints. The commonest misprints in the
printed Shakespearian texts fall into five classes. Let
us take them in turn, noting the parallels in the
Addition as we go along:

(i) minim misprints. In 'English' script minim-
letters are m, n, u, i, c, r, w; and the large number of
compositor's errors in words containing such letters
prove that Shakespeare must have been more than
ordinarily careless in his formation of them, that he
did not properly distinguish between the convex and
concave forms, and that he often kept no count of
his strokes, especially when writing two or more
minim-letters in combination. For example, we have
game' for 'gain' (Oth.), 'might' for 'night' and
sting' for 'stung' (Lear), 'sanctity' for 'sanity,' and
the most' for 'th' inmost' (Ham.), 'vncharmd' for
unharmed' and 'fennell' for 'female' (Rom.),
where' for 'when' (Oth. and Lear) and 'when' for
where' (2 Hen. IV), 'pardons' for 'pandars' (Ham.),
arm'd' for 'a wind' (Ham.), 'now' for 'nor'
(1 Hen. IV).

The excessive carelessness of the pen which wrote
the Addition in its formation of minim-letters has
struck every student of these three pages. It is some-
times difficult to distinguish w from r (cf. ryse, •zohat
1. 106; ttuere, error 1. 95)orr from« (v. figure 1. 102,
teares 1. 108); the letters m and n are very often con-
cave in form; and the writer's besetting sin is a neglect

u8 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LINKS

to count the strokes of such letters, especially when
they appear in combination (e.g. Linco 1. 5 — in with
two minims; dung 1. 12 — un with five minims, etc.,
etc.). Now, of course, minim-misprints are by no
means peculiar to the Shakespearian quartos, or
minim-penslips to the Addition, though we fancy
that their frequency in either case is somewhat re-
markable. It is, for instance, noteworthy that while
Dr Greg called special attention to three minim-pen-
slips by Hand D in his edition of Sir Thomas More
for the Malone Society, only two others in the whole
of the rest of the manuscript seem to have caught his
eye. All we wish here to insist upon, however, is that
the writer of the quarto-manuscripts and the writer of
the Addition are once more shown to be alike in their
penmanship.

(ii) a : minim misprints. This second class is closely
connected with the first, and is to be explained by
Shakespeare's habit of sometimes leaving the top of
his a open, or conversely of curving the initial minim
of his u so that it appears to be an ill-formed a. Thus
Oth. gives us 'coach' for 'couch' and 'heate' for
'hint' (spelt 'hente'); Troil. 'seat' for 'sense'; Ham.
'heave a' for 'heaven' and 'raine' for 'ruin'; L.L.L.
'vnsallied' for 'unsullied,' etc. Conversely we have
'distruction' for 'distraction' and 'Thous' for
'Thoas' in Troil.; 'vttred' for 'altred' in 2 Hen. IV;
'sute' for 'sale' in Rom.; 'couches' for 'coaches' in
L.L.L., etc.

In the Addition a and u are frequently quite in-
distinguishable; compare, for example, 'nature' (1.
126) with 'Itfrman' (1. 128), and note that the first
stroke of the u in 'nature' is curved, exactly as if the
pen were preparing to write an a.

WITH THE GOOD QUARTOS 119

(iii) e : d misprints. As we have already noted, the
formation of these two letters generally differs as to
scale only, in the English style, a difference which the
quantity of errors due to confusion between them in
the quartos proves that Shakespeare was not careful
to observe. A few oddities may be here given: 'end'
for 'due' (Son.), 'lawelesse' for 'landlesse' (Ham.),
'beholds' for 'behowles' (M.N.D.), 'some' for 'fond'
(Rom.), 'and' for 'are' (Lear and 2 Hen. IV). It
would be idle to give instances of a similar careless-
ness from the Addition; they occur in almost every
other line.

(iv) e : 0 misprints. The small-scale e and 0 are
very similar in English script; they are therefore liable
to confusion in rapid writing. Thus we find 'these'
for 'those' and 'now' for 'new' more than once in
the quartos, together with 'thou' for 'then' and 'then'
for 'thou,' 'euer' for 'over' and 'ouer' for 'ever,'
and so on. The distinction is generally well preserved
in the Addition. But the second 0 of 'shoold' (1. 81)
and the 0 of 'plodding' (1. 76) are formed like an e,
while in 'be' (middle of 1. 130), 'them' (1. 138),
'gentlemen' (1. 144), the head of the e shows a
tendency to exaggeration, so that in the first instance
at any rate we get 'bo.'

(v) 0 : a misprints. The quartos give us a few ex-
amples of a misprinted for 0, generally where a minim
letter follows, e.g. 'frame' for 'from,' 'hand' for
'home,' 'cammon' for 'common.' These may be ex-
plained by crowding and are not particularly signifi-
cant. More frequently, however, we have 0 for a,
and in words where, as often as not, no minim-letter
occurs to account for the confusion. Thus Troil.
gives us 'obiect' for 'abject' and 'Calcho's' for

120 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LINKS

'Calchas,' Lear 'lodes' for 'ladies' and 'O light' for
'alight,' Ham. 'cost' for 'cast,' Merch. 'lost' for
'last,' etc. Now this curious type of misprint is very
neatly explained by the handwriting of the Addition,
where we have frequent instances of the method of
forming an a in which the upright becomes de-
tached from the body of the letter, so as to give some-
thing which closely resembles o linked with the letter
following, oi, or oz. Examples of this may be found in
11. 5 (great, eate), 7 (a), 9 (a), 12 (palsey), 52 (a), 57
(masters), 85 (reasons), 94 (thappostle), 108 (wash),
122(a), 130 (pleasd), 131(a), 133 (afoord), 142
(master). That a compositor could go the full length
of mistaking Shakespeare's a for oz is proved by the
Hamlet quarto in which we have 'sort' for 'sate'
(1. 5. 56) and 'or' for 'a' (1. 2. 96).

In dealing with misprints i-iv, we are still in the
sphere of negative evidence. Such misprints and pen-
slips are common in books and manuscripts of the
period, though we think it unlikely that many would
be found which would show a general proneness to
all four to the same extent as is shown in the quartos
and the Addition. In any event our accumulation of
coincidence goes forward; our confidence is not
dashed as it might have been if the Addition had pro-
vided parallels to only two or three of the common
quarto misprints. But the fifth type of misprint takes
us on to different ground. Misprints of 0 for a, with-
out the minim complication, are not common, while
the oz business is probably rare; and though a search
through the books and papers of the period would
no doubt show that other writers besides Shakespeare
occasionally formed a like oz, it is very encouraging
to find that the Addition supports and explains the

WITH THE GOOD QUARTOS 121

quartos in regard to this unusual form of misprint.
This last coincidence strengthens the case for identi-
fication considerably.

At this juncture, perhaps, the sceptic may demur:
'Yes, but how can you tell that a compositor faced
with the three pages of the Addition would have
stumbled in just the same way as his brethren who
set up the quartos; you may have overlooked other
penslips which would have given rise to misprints
which have no parallels in the quartos.' We cannot,
it is true, turn an Elizabethan compositor on to the
Addition at this time of day. But we have evidence
on the question almost, if not quite, as interesting.
These three pages have been twice independently
transcribed and printed within recent years: first by
Dr Greg and later by Sir Edward Maunde Thomp-
son; and their readings of certain words differ, while
in one instance both go astray. I am not now, of
course, speaking of words which have become obscure
through the deterioration of the manuscript, but of
difficulties due solely to the way in which the writer
formed his letters. And it will, I think, be admitted
that where palaeographical experts, with magnifying
glasses, differ or go wrong, the Elizabethan com-
positor working quickly in a poorly lighted room
would be most likely to misprint. Let us turn then
to the readings in question: 1. 9 Greg 'or sorry';
Thompson 'a sorry' — 1. 82 Greg 'ordere'; Thomp-
son 'orderd' — 1. 140 Greg 'momtanish'; Thompson
'mountanish' — 1. 38 Greg 'Shrewsbury'; Thompson
' Shrewsbury ,' while in 11. 30 and 32 both editors have
'Shrewsbury' where, as Dr Greg readily admitted
when it was pointed out to him1, they should have
1 Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 6, 1919.

122 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LINKS

printed ' Shrewsbury.' In other words, the exception-
ally careful and well-equipped modern editors of the
Addition have fallen into four out of the five traps
which most commonly led to the undoing of the com-
positors of the Shakespearian quartos. This may be a
coincidence; but surely it is a very remarkable one.

Spellings. The Addition contains twenty-five
minuscule letters (i.e. all but x of the alphabet), and
fourteen majuscules; on the other hand the writer
makes use of some 370 words. When we turn, there-
fore, to compare the spellings of the Addition with
those in the quartos, the field of possible coincidence
or divergence is greatly widened, and the argument
from agreement, if agreement can be shown, corre-
spondingly strengthened. But before we come to
grips with this side of the business a few introductory
remarks are necessary.

The spellings of the Addition look uncouth, if not
illiterate, to a modern eye unaccustomed to read six-
teenth century manuscripts. We are to-day almost
morbidly sensitive in the matter of orthography,
seeing that correct spelling ranks with standard pro-
nunciation as one of the chief hall-marks of the
elements of culture and social standing. The situation
in Shakespeare's day was entirely different. Then a
gentleman spelt as he list, and only 'base mechanicals'
such as compositors spelt more or less consistently.
Nor was the spelling even of learned men always
preserved from vagaries by such knowledge of the
rudiments of etymology as they must have possessed.
As proof of this, here are a few spellings culled from
the manuscripts of Gabriel Harvey, professor of
rhetoric in the University of Cambridge, and one of
the most brilliant scholars in Shakespeare's period:

WITH THE GOOD QUARTOS 123

apotkaryes, karreeres, kollege, coll'idg, credditt, epithite,
herittiques, interprit, ishu, meddicine, mallancholy, min-
nisteri, monosyllables, fisnamy (= physiognomy), pos-
sebly, sheivte (= suit)1. If a Greek student and
university professor could spell like this, we are not
to be surprised at anything we may find in Shake-
speare.

In the second place, it should be noted, the prob-
ability of an abnormal spelling cropping up in the
quartos depends, in large measure, upon the character
of the word, seeing that the commoner the word the
more likely is it to be altered by the compositor in the
head-carrying process. A comparison between the
spellings of Gabriel Harvey's manuscripts with those
in his printed books supplies ample support to this
generalisation. The first volume of Grosart's edition
of Harvey's works, reprinted in their original spelling,
contains over 200 pages of his writing as set up by
contemporary compositors. The following are some
of his most pronounced spelling tricks, as evidenced
by his manuscripts, together with the number of
times they occur in these pages of Grosart: 'ar' for
'are' (o); -id, -ist, -ith for -ed, -est, -eth (8); 'on' for
'one' (o); ssh for sh (o); initial k for c (3); absence of
mute e after c (o); absence of mute e after other con-
sonants (41); 'Ingland' and 'Inglish' for 'England'
and 'English' (0). It should be noted that 'England'
and 'English' are quite frequent words in the volume.
The list, of course, might be greatly extended; but
these instances should be sufficient to show (i) that
compositors freely altered the spelling of their original,

1 Taken from a list of spellings compiled from Harvey's
Letter-book (Camden Soc. 1884), and Marginalia (ed. G. C.
Moore-Smith, 191 3).

124 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LINKS

(ii) that, nevertheless, they sometimes introduced
copy-spellings inadvertently, and (iii) that the original
spelling of common words was peculiarly liable to be
obliterated in print. Yet Harvey's printed works are
full of spellings which we also find in his manuscripts,
so much so that if his name were not on the title-
pages, a very strong case could I think be made out
in favour of his authorship. These spellings in print
are, however, spasmodic; they are for the most part
words that have caught the compositor's eye.

It follows that in Shakespearian texts abnormal
spellings of common words are likely to be very scarce
or even non-existent. Occasionally, however, a mis-
print will give us a glimpse, through the compositor's
eye so to speak, of the word in the copy. One or two
examples may be taken to show how the business
works out. Harvey, we have noted, usually omitted
the e after c in words like 'assistance,' 'temperance,'
etc. Out of twenty-eight occurrences of words which
we should now end with -ce the writer of the Addition
omits the final e in seven instances. Had Shakespeare
the same habit? If so, his compositors, like those of
Harvey, covered up his tracks by always inserting the
missing e; for there are no quarto-spellings without it.
Yet the misprint 'pallat' for 'palace,' which occurs in
Rom. 5. 3. 107, strongly suggests that here Shake-
speare spelt the word 'pallac,' forming his c like a /,
as might easily happen in English script; while
converse misprints like 'intelligence' for 'intelligent'
and 'ingredience' for 'ingredient' can hardly have
arisen if the compositors were not liable to be con-
fused by such words in their copy. There is evidence,
therefore, that Shakespeare, like the writer of the
Addition, sometimes omitted final e after c.

WITH THE GOOD QUARTOS 125

Harvey, again, always spells 'are' as 'ar,' and we
may assume that the writer of the Addition generally
did so also, since 'ar' occurs eight times and 'are' only
once. But 'ar,' like 'pallac,' would be abnormal in
print, though common enough in manuscript; and it
will be remembered that the compositors in Harvey's
selected pages never once give it. How then are we
to discover Shakespeare's practice in the matter?
Well, the contracted forms ' thar' (=they are) in Ham.
and 'yar' (= you are) in Lear are suggestive up to a
point. More significant, however, is the misprint 'or'
for 'are' in Ham. 1. 3. 74, which shows us at any
rate that Shakespeare could spell the word without the
e mute. Similarly 'wer' for 'were,' which occurs
three times in the Addition, crops up twice, by inad-
vertence no doubt, in Rom. Like Harvey, once more,
the writer of the Addition spells 'one' without the
final e, and the spelling is found eight times in the
quartos. Further, the quartos give us six instances of
'on' misprinted as 'one,' which is a pretty fair indica-
tion that the two words were indistinguishable in the
compositors' copy. We can feel certain, I think, that
Shakespeare frequently if not always spelt 'one' as
on.

As a last example of common words which the
Addition spells in a fashion normal in manuscript but
abnormal in print, we may take 'theise' (= these), a
spelling which in passing we may note is very rare
with Harvey. Here the quartos afford no help of any
kind, and we are not surprised. If we turn to the
Folio, however, we find 'theise' in Hen. V, 3. 2. 122.
Why does it occur here? The answer is that Jamy, a
dialect speaker, holds the stage, and that when dealing
with dialect compositors with a conscience will follow

126 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LINKS

their copy literatim. Yet there is no dialect signific-
ance of any kind in 'theise,' a spelling which may be
found in almost any manuscript of the period. It is
simply a piece of Shakespearian orthography, which
the compositor, hypnotised by the surrounding dialect,
has transferred to his stick. And the hypnosis did not
cease there, for the spelling persists to-day in all
modern editions. It is by no means the only instance
of a Shakespearian spelling embalmed, so to speak, in
the spice of comedy.

The foregoing examples only show that Shake-
speare, like the writer of the Addition, spelt certain
very common words in a fashion not unusual in con-
temporary manuscripts, though most unusual in print.
We may next consider a group of spellings which had
become or were becoming old-fashioned in Shake-
speare's day. The Addition gives us 'a leven' for
'eleven,' a spelling which also occurs in Merch. 2. 2.
171, L.L.L. 3. 1. 1721, Rom. and Troi/., while the
variant 'a leauen' is to be found in Ham. Now
these forms, though somewhat archaic, were not un-
common in manuscript; Harvey, for instance, uses
them both. They are rare, on the other hand, in print
after 1590; and their appearance in Hamlet (1605)
and Troilus and Cressida (1609) is strong evidence
that they were copy-spellings. 'Elament' for 'ele-
ment,' though less striking to the modern eye
than the previous example, is probably more old-
fashioned; the N.E.D. gives it as a fourteenth century
form, but not later. It is, therefore, interesting to
notice that 'elaments' in the Addition is paralleled by
'elament' in Ham. 4. 7. 181 and 'elamentes' in

1 This example, which comes from Costard's mouth, is
perpetuated in modern editions.

WITH THE GOOD QUARTOS 127

L.L.L. 4. 3. 329. The N.E.D., again, gives 'deul'
and 'dewle' as fifteenth century forms of 'devil'; and
they cannot have been common in the sixteenth.
' Deule,' however, occurs twice in the Addition, twice
in Rom. and once in Ham., while the latter text gives
it the added support of a misprint — 'deale.' Or take
another instance from L.L.L. (1. 1. 316) — 'affliccio,'
which at first sight looks like a misprint. The termina-
tion -ccion was quite common in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, as a reference to the N.E.D. will
show, but unusual in the sixteenth; certainly not to
be tolerated in print. But the appearance of 'affliccio'
(i.e. affliccio) suggests that it was a Shakespearian
form; and we are, therefore, not surprised to find
'infeccion' in the Addition. Similarly 'sealf or
'sealfe,' which the N.E.D. quotes in brackets as an
unusual sixteenth century spelling, was probably
Shakespearian likewise, since the misprint 'seale
slaughter' for 'self-slaughter' {Ham. 1. 2. 132) can
hardly have arisen except from a miscorrected copy-
spelling 'sealfe,' the/being carelessly abstracted from
the forme instead of the a. Now 'self never appears
in the Addition, but 'sealf is used five times and
'sealues' once. The archaic form 'noyce' for 'noise,'
dated fifteenth century by the N.E.D., is to be found
in 1. 72 of the Addition. It would be quite abnormal
in print, and does not occur in the quartos. But the
misprint 'voyce' for 'noise,' which Oth. 5. 2. 85
offers us, shows that Shakespeare's old-fashioned spell-
ing was puzzling the compositors in 1622. Further,
in A Lover's Complaint we find the spelling
'straing' for 'strange.' The N.E.D. gives it (together
with 'straynge') as a sixteenth century form, but
quotes no examples; it was therefore probably un-

128 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LINKS

common, and I know of no other instances beyond
those here given. Yet we can be almost certain that
it was a Shakespearian usage, since the misprint1
'straying' for 'strange' in L.L.L. 5. 2. 773 can be
neatly explained by the presence of 'straing' or
'strayng' (with the n perhaps written in three minims)
in the copy. The Addition gives us 'straing' once,
'straingers' six times, and 'strange' or 'straunge,' its
normal variant, never. Lastly, to cut our list short,
we may take the form 'Iarman' which the Addition
uses for 'German' — certainly an unusual one in that
period. Once more a misprint comes to our help, this
time from the Folio, M.W.W. giving us 'Iamanie'
for 'Germanie' at 4. 5. 89. We may observe, in
passing, that 'Jamany,' which is a word from the
mouth of the redoubtable Dr Caius, still persists in
all modern editions — another instance of the conser-
vative force of the comic spirit.

The spellings quoted from the Addition in the last
paragraph are, for the most part, unusual forms for
writers of the period. They are old-fashioned; and it
is unlikely, to say the least of it, that any two authors
would be equally old-fashioned in the spelling of all
these words. It is, therefore, very encouraging to find
parallels in the quartos for every one of them. Our
accumulation of coincidences is by this time growing
into an impressive pile. Can we crown it by citing
a spelling from both the Addition and the quartos
which is not only old-fashioned but very old-fashioned,

1 Not perhaps an 'obvious misprint' in the sense used on
p. 114, since the Q 'straying,' rejected by Capell and later
editors, has recently found a defender in Mr H. C. Hart,
editor of the ' Arden ' Loves Labour 's Lost. I am convinced,
however, that Mr Hart is mistaken.

WITH THE GOOD QUARTOS 129

not only unusual but rare ? We have such a spelling,
I think, in 'scilens,' which occurs in 1. 50 of the
Addition. It is undoubtedly a rare form, and though
the N.E.D. gives 'scylens,' which comes near it,
among its list of variant spellings, it actually quotes
no closer or later parallel than 'scylence' (1513)1.
Now 'silence' is, of course, frequent enough in the
quartos, and as a common noun is always spelt in the
modern fashion. In one quarto, however, 2 Hen. IV,
it is the name of a character, to wit Master Justice
Silence; and as such it is spelt 'Scilens' no less than
eighteen times! A compositor may do what he will
with the spelling of common nouns, but character-
names must be treated with respect. The business is
eloquent on the question of the relationship between
manuscript and print in the Elizabethan era. But it
tells us something more. The unexpected appearance
of Master 'Scilens' proves that 'scilens' was a Shake-
spearian spelling — as it was also the spelling of the
writer of the Addition.

The foregoing specimens are deliberately selected
for their difficulty. With the other spellings of the
quartos and the Addition we have plainer sailing.
Nevertheless, lest anyone should suspect that, in
selecting our instances, we have suppressed evidence
unfavourable to the case for identification, an ap-
pendix will be found at the end of this paper which
gives a list of all noteworthy spellings in the Addition,
including many that are by no means abnormal in
late sixteenth century print. These spellings are
classified, and their parallels quoted from the quartos.

1 The similar forms 'scite' (site) and 'scituate' (situate) are
more often met with, and the latter, for example, occurs in
Nashe's printed works.

130 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LINKS

Often the parallel is direct; at other times we have to
content ourselves with parallels from words of the
same class. For example, as we have seen, 'infection'
is not found in the quartos; yet 'affliccio' provides us
with an equally serviceable analogy. Or again, we need
not be disturbed that the quartos furnish no instance
of 'geat' (= get), seeing that, being one of the com-
monest words in the language, it could hardly escape
normalisation by the compositors; yet the frequency
of ea for e in other quarto- words lends strong support
to the form of the Addition. Shakespeare's spelling
was far from consistent; nevertheless, he was addicted
to certain spelling tendencies, which can be reduced to
some sort of system; and it is nearly always possible
to estimate the possibilities of his orthography for any
given word by reference to other words of like forma-
tion. Not a single noteworthy spelling in the Addition
but has its parallel, one way or another, in the quartos.
On the other hand, it is equally important to notice
that the normal spellings of the Addition are nowhere
seriously challenged by abnormal spellings of the same
words in the quartos. For example, the writer of the
Addition never uses initial k for c, or ssh for sh, or -id,
-ith, -ist for -ed, -eth, -est, as Harvey and other
authors of the period constantly do. It would, there-
fore, be disturbing if the quartos gave evidence that
such spelling tricks were part of Shakespeare's stock-
in-trade as a penman. Happily they do not.

To sum up. We have seen that Shakespeare like
the writer of the Addition used the English hand;
that he resembled him in his fondness for capital C;
that he seems to have written about the same number
of lines to the foolscap page; that his pen was prone
to all the common slips which we find in the Ad-

WITH THE GOOD QUARTOS 131

dition, and to one which was not common; that the
spellings in these three pages which are modern or
normal to Elizabethan compositors have modern or
normal forms in the quartos; that those which are
common in manuscript but abnormal in print can all
be supported by parallels or misprints in the Shake-
spearian texts; and finally, that spellings, old-fashioned
or rare in manuscript, are equally Shakespearian.
Wherever we turn, we discover agreement. We have
subjected the thesis that Shakespeare wrote the
Addition with his own hand to all the bibliographical
tests which seem possible in the circumstances, and
every time it responds to the experiment. Biblio-
graphy can find nothing un-Shakespearian in the
Addition. On the contrary, it reveals a number of
coincidences which grow more and more impressive
as they crowd one upon another, until in the sum
they go very near to proving the identification with-
out reference to other lines of evidence.

9—2

132

APPENDIX

THE SPELLINGS OF THE THREE PAGES,
WITH PARALLELS FROM THE QUARTOS

By J. Dover Wilson

NOTE. Under each heading or sub-heading in
this classified list the significant spellings of the
Addition are given first in italics, followed, in
square brackets, by such insignificant spellingsof words
belonging to the same class as are found therein; next
come direct parallels or relevant misprints, where
such are to be found, in the quartos, with references;
and lastly, a list of indirect parallels from the quartos.
Numerals without round brackets denote the number
of the line in the transcript of the Addition; numerals
within round brackets give the number of times a
word occurs. The grouping follows, of course,
standard modern English spelling. The line-numera-
tion for quarto references is that of the Griggs-
Praetorius facsimiles; for folio references that of the
Globe Shakespeare.

i. Doubled final consonant (generally after a short
vowel).

Very frequent in the Qq. with mute e, and in that
form was a common variant of the modern spelling in
books of this period. The double consonant without
e was apparently also common in manuscript, though
rare in print after 1590.

SPELLINGS 133

d. Chidd 73 [bid 100, breed 10, did 94, dread 99,
god (8), good (5), had (4), pceed 114, red I, stood 21]. —
no direct parallel. — madd, redd, sadd.

/. Beeff 3, /off 7, ruff 79 [if 91, yf (6), of (13)]—
ruffe Lea. 3. 4. 2. — cliff (= clef).

g. dogg^ 135. — dogge Ham. 2. 2. 182, etc. — begg,
c°gg> gigg> nutmegg, wagg, baggs, leggs, raggs.

n. sinn 93 [an 83, 133, bin 66, can (3), in (7), man 83,
men (3), on (5), pdon 143, then 6, 104, when 63, 118].
— sinnd Ado 5. 1. 283. — fann, winn.

p. tkipp 18, slipp 122, vppon (3) [keep 28, keepes 42].
— vppon (very freq.). — copps, dropps, stopps, proppe,
lippes, etc.

r. warrs 112, warre 113. — warre L.L.L. 1. 1. 9,
Ham. 1 . 1 . in . — barrs, Starrs, farr, marr, barre, farre,
preferre, scarre, spurre, starre, sturre.

s. prentisses 22, 23 (2). — cursse, decesse (= decease),
pursse.

t. cutt 120, gott 68, 80, letts (3), sett 90, sytt 77,
whett 134 [at (5), but (10), Credyt 51, geat6g, great 5, 124,
yt (5), Let 90, letf, 43, 89, not (14), out 132, put 119, ryot
113, rout 116, Submyt 144]. — gotte Lea. 5. 3. 173. —
dirtt, fitt, hott, rort, shutt, sott, witts, abette, flatte, putte, etc.

ii. Absence of final e mute.

after c. insolenc 81, obedienc (3), obedyenc 39, offyc 98,
ffraunc 127 [audience 47, Iustyce 99, peace (1 5), pence 2,
pvince 128, violence 132, voyce 51]. — Misprints 'in-
gredience' for 'ingredient' {Oth. 2. 3. 311), 'intelligence'
for 'intelligent' {Lea. 3. 7. 12), 'pallat' for 'palace' {R.J.
5. 3. 107), 'instance' for 'instant' {L.L.L. 5. 2. 817) can
best be explained by Shakespeare's habit of omitting e
after c.

after g. Charg 28, straing 8 [charge 55, lugage 75].
— Charg L.L.L. 5. 1. 86; straing Lover's Comp. 303;
'Strange' misprinted 'straying' L.L.L. 5. 2. 773. — chal-
leng, mannadg, reneag, reueng, targ.

134 APPENDIX

after m. com 124, Corns 14 [Come 4, name 26, 103,
115, same 85, 108, armes 95, tymes 66]. — com Ad. 2. 3.
32, Ham. 5. 2. 1 1 1, L.L.L. 1. 1. 59; corns Ham. 5. 1. 153,
V.A. 444, L.L.L. 5.2. 548. — becom, nam, som, welcom,
hansom, theams, Achadems, somthing, sombody, somtime.

after n. ymagin 74, doon 141, on (= one) 62, 83, 87
[throne 103, nyne 2, mutynes 115, stone 3]. — on (= one)
8 times in Qq., don Lea. 5. 3. 35. — en gin, medicin, begon,
gon, non.

after r. ar (8), forzvarne 94, ther 118, thers 147, wer
(3), zukerin 65 [are 107, desyres 77, figure 102, nature 126,
sore 10, there 63, twere 95, where 129]. — tha'r Ham. 4. 7.
1 r, y'ar Lea. 4. 6. 9; 4. 7. 49, or (misp. for 'ar') Ham. r. 3.
74, thers (n), wer R.J. 2. 2. 11, 2. 5. 16, wer't Z<?rf.
4. 2. 63, Oth. 2. 3. 349, wherinZ^. 3. 1. 12, Luc. 1526. —
Nauar, plesur, tresur, ventur, vultur, sowr, therfore, far
(= fare), etc.

after s. hows keeper 58 [case 139, choose 70, ryse 106,
theise 12, 67, 144]. — houskeeping L.L.L. 2. 1. 104, hous-
hold Ric. II, 2. 2. 60, 2. 3. 28, R.J. (pro.) Luc. 198, etc. —
codpis, copps, deus (= deuce), els, opposles.

after t. appropriat 137, desperat 107 [maiestrate 146,
state 67]. — 'appropriate' not in canon, 'desperat' or
'desprat' (10). — adulterat, agat, aggrauat, confiderat, cur-
rat (= curate), importunat, mandat, pallat, prenominat,
priuat, remediat, peregrinat, smot.

iii. Doubled medial consonant.
Very frequent in Qq.

hiddious 132, appostle 94. — hiddious Ham. 2. 2. 498,
'apostle' (only twice in Shakespeare).

iv. Single medial consonant.
Frequent in Qq.

adicion r 1 8 cf. adicted Ham. 2. 1. 19.
afoord 133 cf. diferences, proferd, etc.
lugage 75 cf. bragart, nigard, wagling, wagoner.

SPELLINGS 135

Comand 47, Comaund 52, 99 cf. comerse, imediate,
iminent, etc.

hearing{j= herring) r, Sury^Scf. cary, hering, squiril,etc.

v. Final -s for -ss.

Writers and printers of the period had the choice
between -s and -sse, and it seems certain that Shake-
speare generally preferred the former, [s had come
in early in the 16th century and was going out at
the end of it.]

mas 58, trespas 124, stilnes 52 [passe 4, possesse 120].
— mas 2 Hen. IV, 2. 4. 4, 21, 5. 3. 14, trespas Son. 35. 6,
R.J. 1. 5. in, Lea. 2. 4. 44, stilnes M.V. 1. 1.90, 5. 1. 56.
— chearles, choples, giltles, les, noyseles, opposles, vnles;
carkas, compas, distres, Dutches, glas, kis, larges, pas,
protectres; darknes, gentlenes, grosnes, happines, lowlines,
neerenes, sadnes; cf. misp. 'Loue lines' for 'lovelines'
Oth. 2. 1. 232; 'chapels' for 'chaples' R.J. 4. 1. 83.

vi. ck for k after n.

banck 39, thanck 59, thinck 138 [cf. mark (3), shark
86]. — bancke Ham. 3. 2 (Dumb-show), bancks Luc. 1442,
banckes Son. 56. n; thincke Ad. 1. 1. 103 — banckrout,
blancke, blancks, blancket, dancke, franck, franckly, inck,
inckie, ynckle, lincke, linckt, mountibanck, pinck, pranck,
ranck, ranckle, sincke, sincketh, stincketh, stincking, winck,
wrinckle (cf. barck, barckt, inbarckt).

vii. c and t interchangeable^ before ion, -ient, -ial,
etc. [c was the early form, which / was superseding
even in words in which it did not ultimately prevail.]

adicion 118, infeccion 14, transportacion 76 [ynnova-
tion 93, mediation 145, nation 131, pclamation 117, sup-
position 91]. — addicions Lea. 1. 1. 138, Lov. Comp. 118;
for 'infeccion' cf. 'affliccio' L.L.L. 1. 1. 316, 'transporta-
tion' not in the canon. — condicions, deuocion, impa-

136 APPENDIX

cience, impacient, oblacion, parciall, pacience, pacient,
peticioner, sacietie, Venecian. — antient, arithmetition, as-
sotiate, audatious, auspitious, gratious, gratiously, musitian,
pernitious, physitian, polititian, suspition, vngratious,
vitious.

viii. ct for t.

aucthoryty 78, 94. — aucthoritie L.L.L. I. 1. 87 (cf.
'sainct' R.J. 1. 1. 220, Luc. 85).

ix. c, s and z interchangeable.

Frequent in Qq.

prentiz.es 9, premisses 22, 23 (2), noyce 72. — ap-
prentishood R. II, 1. 3. 271 ; 'voyce' misp. for 'noise' Oth.
5.2. 85. — compremyzd, dazie, cowardize, eaz'd, incyzion,
rowze, etc.; bace, cace, elce, fleach, mouce, Nector
( = Nestor), nurcery, ceaze (= seize), cized (= sized), etc.;
side (='cide), codpis, cressant, deus (=deuce), faste
(=faced), ise, cease (=seize), etc.

x. sc for s.

scilens 50. — Scilens (18 times in 2 Hen. IV, 3. 2. and
5. 3. for Justice Silence).

xi. a and ai Interchangeable.

(a) plaigue 53, straing 8, straingers (6). — straing Lov.
Comp. 303, and cf. 'straying' misp. for 'strange' L.L.L. 5.
2. 773. — bained, humaine, inhumaine, mayne, plaister,
Romaine, taile, traiders, vaine, wainyng.

(6) spane 128 [against 109, 134, gainst (3), captaine
114]. — atwane, bale, catiffe, captane, clame, dasie, gate,
male, plantan, proclames, retale, vnreclamed, wast.

xii. a for e.

a leven 2, elament^ 136. — a leuen M.V. 2. 2. 171,
R.J. 1. 3. 34, L.L.L. 3. 1. 172, T.C. 3. 3. 296; a leauen
Ham. 1. 2. 252, elament Ham. 4. 7. 181, elamentes L.L.L.
4. 3. 329; cf. ralish, randeuous.

SPELLINGS 137

xiii. ar and er interchangeable (medial and initial).

argo (Pcomic) 5, basterd^ 12, Iarman 128. — argo 2 Hen.
VI, 4. 2. 31 (F.); basterd Son. 124. 2; 'Iamanie' misp. for
'Germanie' M.W.W. 4. 5. 89 (F.). — costerd, haggerds,
hermonious, hazerd, lethergie, noteries, person (= parson),
pertake, perticuler, seperation, seperable, steru'd. — clarke,
desart (=desert), arrand, marchant, parson (= person),

swarue.

xiv. -ar, -er, -ur, -ure, -our interchangeable.

Artker 43 (Arthur 59), offendor 123, harber 127,
mayer 28, maier 24. — offendor 2 Hen. IV, 4. 1. 216, 5. 2.
81, Son. 42. 5, Luc. 612 (offendour Ad. 5. 1. 315), harber
Luc. 768 (harbor T.C. 1. 3. 44, Otk. 2. 1. 121). — ardure,
armour, cindar, conquerour, dominatur, expectors, familier,
feauorous, fingard, frier, gossamours,honerd,humerous, in-
heritour, leachour, lier, liquer, manner (= manor), morter,
murmour, oculer, odor, pander, particuler, peculier, pedler,
piller, profard, progenitours, refracturie, sauor, scholler,
serviture, singuler, souldier, souldiour, souldior, splendor,
taber, tenor (=tenour), tenure (=tenour), terrer, terrour,
timerous, tuterd, valor, valure, verdour, vigor.

xv. aufor aw (cf. ozv for ou).

braule 78. — braule L.L.L. 3. 1. 7, Otk. 2. 3. 328. —
crauling, hauke, hauthorne, impaund, paund.

xvi. -ay for -ey.

obay 100, 116, 146 [they (7)]. — obay Ham. 1. 2. 120,
5. 2. 227, Lea. 3. 4. 81, 153, 4. 2. 64, T.C. 4. 5. 72,
5. 1. 49, 5. 5. 27, L.L.L. 4. 3. 217. — cocknay, conuay,
pray (=prey), suruay.

xvii. at for ei.

zuaight 7 [their (9)]. — waight Son. 50. 6, Luc. 1494,
T.C. 1. 3. 203, 3. 2. 173, 4. 1. 71, 5. 2. 168, Lea. 5. 3. 323,
waigh M.N.D. 3. 2. 130, Son. 108. 10, 120. 8, L.L.L.

138 APPENDIX

5. 2. 26, 27, Ham. 1. 2. 13. N.B. wey (1), weyde (2),
way (3), wayed (1), waide (1) also found. — counterfeit,
daine, fain, forrain, forfait, hainous, haire (=heir), naigh,
soueraine.

xviii. ey ei and ie interchangeable.

frend^ 27, ther (= their) 137, _//r;W 143, freind^ 90,
theise 12, 67, 144 [their (9)]. — frend L.L.L. 5. 2. 844,
frending Ham. 1. 5. 1 86, there = their (12), theise Hen. F,

3. 2. 122 (F.). — beleue, besedged, counterfet, forfet, in-
uegled, perst (= pierced), percing, surfet. — feinde, feirce,
feilde, greife, leidge, leiutenant, peirce, seiges, theife, weild,
casheird, releife.

xix. ea for ei or ie.

£ceaue 92. — perceaue M.V. 5. 1. 77, perceau'd Lea.
2. 4. 39. — conceaue, deceaue, enpearced, fearce, pearce,
receaue, ceaze (= seize).

xx. ea for e.

geat 69, heare (= here) 62, hearing (= herring) r,
sea// 85 (3), 105, 146, sea/ues 46, togeather 16 [lent 98,
102, question 21, red 1, sett 90, wer 63, 95, 137]. — heare
(= here) Lea. 2. 4. 137, M.N.D. 3. 2. 453, R.J. (pro.) 14,
L.L.L. 5. 2. 302, Ham. 5. 2. 243, Luc. 1290, 1660, Z,oe\
CW/>. 54, 197; for 'sealf cf. 'seale slaughter' misp. for
'selfe-slaughter' Ham. 1. 2. 132; togeather L.L.L. 1. 1. 21 r,

4. 3. 192. — alleadge, ceader, cleargie, compleat, creast,
deaw, dispearse, Eaues (= Eve's), eauen, extreame, feauor,
fleash, ieasture, heard (= herd), ieast, leachers, leaprous,
least, leauers,leaueld, meare, meate (= mete), n east, neather,
orepearch, peart, preceading, preast (= pressed), reneag,
repleat, sceane, seauen, seueare, shead, sheald ( = shelled),
shepheard, stearne, tearme, teasty, theame, vearses, weast.

xxi. e /or ea.

bere 40, beres 93 [dread 99, earle (3), earth 104, 133,

SPELLINGS 139

eate 5, eating 5, entreate 145, great 5, 124, hear 30,
heare (8), leade (3), meale 2, peace (15), reasons 85,
speake 41, 57, speakes 41, teares 108]. — appere, berded,
bestly, beuer, bereuing, brest, breth, cheting, clenly, dere,
decesse, dred, ech, erle, endeuour, fethers, gere, hed,
helth, here (=hear), hersed, ielous, lether, meddowes,
ment, nere, pesant, pescod, plesant, plesur, quesie, rept
(= reaped), rere, reherse, serches, sheued (= sheaved),
spred, sted, swere, swet, tere, thred, tresur, welth, wery,
were (=wear), wether, wezell, zelous.

xxii. -ey and -y interchangeable.

Countrey 6 [Country 5, 126, Countrie 5], palsey n,
Sury 48 [Surrey 24, 48]. — Countrey 1 Hen. IF, 4. 3. 82,
L.L.L. 1. 2. 123, countrey L.L.L. 3. 1. 132, Luc. 1838,
Oth. (7), Surry R. II, 4. 1. 74. — hony, iourny, mony,
monky, parly, volly.

xxiii. 0 for oa.

cost£ 76, grote 2, lojf 7, tkrots 120, throtes 134. —
grote R. II, 5. 5. 68; 'loaf not in Qq.; throte R. II, 1. 1.
44. — abord, abrod, approch, bemone, bord, bore, bost,
bote, brode, broch, cloths, cole, cote, croke, gotish, grone,
lone, lone, loth, mone, oke, ores, ote, oth, peticote, reproch,
rode, rore, rosted, soke, sore (=soar), tode, toste.

xxiv. 00 for 0.

afoord 133, doon 141, moor1- (14), moore1 (3), tooth (=to
the) 76 [abode 133, among 46, another 87, Brother 43, 59,
clothd 79, Come 4, com 124, Corns 14, do (7), doing 107,
d°gge x35> g° I25> I27> god (8), gospell 88, gott 6%, 80,
more 5, other (4), portf 76, remoued 72, removing 70,
sore 10, stone 3, sword 103, throne 103, to (23)]. —
affoord (8), doone (6), too'th Lea. 2. 4. 184. — approoue,
behooue, coosning, doo, foorde, foorth, mood (=mode),
mooue, prooue, remooue, reprooue, smoothred, stoore,

1 For 'More.'

i+o APPENDIX

soopstake, toomb, vnboosome, vnwoorthy, woolfe, woon,
woonder, woont, woorth.

xxv. oo for ou.

coold 64, 67, moorne 123, shoold (5), zvoold (8) [al-
though 69, brought 67, Countrie 5, Country 5, 126,
Countrey 6, doubt 147, enough 10, foule 108, founde
147, hound 122, our (3), out 132, pounde 2, rough 55,
sound 89, sounde 117, though 14, wrought 84]. — for
'woold' cf. 'twood' T.C. 2. 3. 229, 3. 3. 255. — cooch,
cooplement, coosin, dooble, poor (=pour), stoop (=stoup),
yoong.

xxvi. ow for ou.

fower 3, hozvskeeper 58, howses 120, sowles ro6 [for
normal spellings see xxv]. — fower M.N.D. 1. 1. 2, 7,
L.L.L. 4. 3. 211. — fowle, hower, lowd, lowring, mowldy,
mowse, powre, powted, prowd, rowse, rowt, showt, snowte,
sower, th'owt (=thou'lt).

xxvii. -ow for -0, -00, -oe.

how (= ho!) 28. — how Ham. 4. 3. 16, 5. 2. 315, 322,
M.V. 5. 1. 109, howe M.N.D. 4. 1. 83, Ham. 3. 2. 57,
hou L.L.L. 4. 3. 174.— cuckow, hollow (= hullo!), rowe
(=roe).

xxviii. ew for ue, ieu or u.

trewe 16, 88, 141. — trew L.L.L. 1. 1. 315, 4. 1. 18,
Son. 125. 13, Lov. Comp. 34, Luc. 455. — adew, adiew,
agew, blew, dew (=due), dewtie, fewell, insewe, glewed,
hew ( = hue), inbrew, indewed, newtrall, newter, reskew,
retinew, renenew, rhewme, rewmatique, trewant, valew,
valiew.

xxix. Miscellaneous.

deule (=devil) 53, 56. — deule R.J. 2. 4. 1, 3. 1. 107,
Ham. 3. 2. 136 (deale Ham. 2. 2. 628 (2) = mispr.).

SPELLINGS 141

bin 66. — frequent in Qq.

ymagin 74. — ymaginary T.C. 3. 2. 20.

to (=too) 124. — v. frequent in Qq.

Inglandjz, 129.— Cf. Inglish M. W. W. 2. 3. 64 (Q. 1).

xxx. Abbreviations and colloquialisms.

a (= he) 42 (2), 141. — frequent in Qq.

bytk (= by the) 58. — byth L.L.L. 5. 2. 61, 474, Lov.
Comp. 112, Lea. 2. 4. 9, 10, R.J. 1. 5. 112, bit'h, Z>*.
2. 4. 9, 5. 3. 19, 0/i. 1. 3. 407, 2. 3. 384, 5. 2. 355.

^« (= ever) 2 1 .

Z. (= Lord) 24, 38.— L. (=lord) R.J. 5- 1. 3» T #«*•
iT7, 1. 1. 49, Z.L.I. 2. 1. 214, 4. 2. 75. — frequent in Qq.
as a tide before a name, e.g. 'my L. Bellario' {M.V. 4. 1.
120).

lets 89, /*/e 43, lett£ 30, 42, /<?//; 141. — 'lets' frequent

in Qq-

matie 93, 101, 122.

ore (= o'er) 39. — frequent in Qq.

tane (= taken) 66. — frequent in Qq.

than (= thou'rt) 58. — th'art Ham. 5. 2. 353, thar't
Lea. 1. 4. 23.

tis 10, 93. — frequent in Qq.

tooth (= to the) 76. — tooth Lea. 2. 4. 184, toth Lea.
5. 3. 24.5, Ham. 2. 2. 287, CM. 1. 3. 133, 5. 2. 156.

/atfn? 95. — frequent in Qq.

zveele (= we will) (4). — frequent in Qq.

what^ 9. — frequent in Qq.

wck 70.

a>'(4), 10th 22, 85.

y°u (54)-

^o«/<? (= you will) 119, 142. — youle #./. 1. 5. 81,
82, 83, L.L.L. 2. 1. 114, 4. 3. 157, Oth. 1. 1. 112, 113.
yor (12).

142

V. THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS—

PARTICULARLY POLITICAL IDEAS

—IN THE THREE PAGES, AND IN

SHAKESPEARE

By R. W. Chambers

i. 'Degree*

FREQUENT misuse has brought into disrepute
the method of drawing parallels between Shake-
speare's acknowledged works and some play or
portion of a play which we wish to attribute to him.
But the case of Sir Thomas More is peculiar. Here
is a history play, the manuscript of which proves that
many hands wrought upon it. Now one scene of 147
lines is written in a different hand from any other in
the manuscript — the hand called D in Greg's edition.
This hand is obviously that of the author, for we see
the writer occasionally pausing, cancelling a word or
phrase, and then finishing the line according to his
second thoughts. However, for an author composing
as he writes, he seems to show great fluency. Shake-
speare, we know, worked in this way. ' His mind and
hand went together: and what he thought he uttered
with that easiness that we have scarce received from him
a blot in his papers.' These words can only mean that
blots were so few that it was possible to use Shake-
speare's original draft as the copy which his fellow
actors received from him: for the words are written
as a proof, not of Shakespeare's care, but of his fluency.

THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS 143

Not all the portions of Sir Thomas More were
written in this way. Thus, for example, the hand C
transcribes, amongst other things, passages which are
also extant in the hand S : and, in doing this, C makes
the errors of a scribe, not of an author; in beginning
a speech of Erasmus he loses his place, writes three
words which should occur in the answer to that
speech seven lines below, discovers the error, cancels
the words, and goes on correctly. Now just as C is
here copying from the script extant in the hand S, it
is conceivable that he might elsewhere be copying
from a lost draft in the hand D. But naturally we
cannot prove this. In style, there is a marked contrast
between the '147 lines' in the hand D and most of
the remaining scenes of the play, good as these often
are. Any possible share by D in the play, beyond these
147 lines, is a matter of pure conjecture. Leaving all
such conjecture aside, we are concerned only with
this one short scene, extant in the hand D.

But of this one scene so eminent a critic as Spedding
has said, that if it be not the work of the young
Shakespeare, there must have been somebody else
then living who could write as well as he. Since
Shakespeare's habit of mingling his own work with
that of others in his early history plays was so marked
as to have exposed him to attack, it can hardly be
denied that here is a case for enquiry. The briefness
of the passage, together with the fact that the play
was never printed till 1844, is sufficient to explain
what in some other cases is so serious a difficulty —
why there should be no tradition connecting the work
with Shakespeare.

So, when the handwriting and the spelling have
been examined by experts, and a favourable verdict

144 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

pronounced, a comparison of the ideas and of their
expression in this scene and in Shakespeare's known
works ought not to be prejudiced by the fact that
similar parallels have been attempted, in cases where
there is not the justification which exists here.

The likeness between the '147 lines' and the Jack
Cade scenes in 2 Henry VI has become a common-
place of criticism. But this is the less conclusive,
because the Jack Cade scenes are found in the Con-
tention betwixt the two famous houses of York and
Lancaster, as printed in 1594, and much of the
Contention is pretty clearly not Shakespeare's work.
It might be argued that 'the writer who foisted
certain of the Jack Cade scenes into the second part
of Henry VV was also the writer of the 147 lines
added to Sir Thomas More, without its being held
that such writer was necessarily Shakespeare. Can
we draw parallels between the '147 lines' and Shake-
speare's undisputed work?

Simpson, when first broaching the subject, drew
two such parallels, noteworthy, but not convincing
without much further support. Spedding and Ward,
in supporting the attribution of this scene to Shake-
speare, dealt only with the general likeness, without
going into details. Recently Schiicking1 has argued
that the play as a whole is an imitation of Shakespeare,
written about 1 604-5. He finds parallels between the
treatment of the 'play within the play' in Sir Thomas
More and in Hamlet. But the insertion of a play
within the play was not the invention of Shakespeare;
it was probably in the Hamlet plot which he took
over. If More's attitude to the players sometimes

1 Engl. Stud. xlvi. 228-51, 'Das Datum des pseudo-Shake-
speareschen Sir Thomas Moore.'

IN THE THREE PAGES 145

reminds us of Hamlet's, there is nothing more than
can well be accounted for by the common atmosphere
in which both plays grew up. It is quite different
with the parallels which Schiicking draws between
'Julius Caesar and the '147 lines.' Here Schiicking
claims to have proved a real connection, and it is
difficult to dispute that claim. Schiicking would ac-
count for the connection by supposing the More
scene to be written in deliberate imitation. But we
cannot argue that, because Antony did actually, as a
matter of history, succeed in swaying the mob by his
speech, whilst the success of More is fictitious, there-
fore the More fiction is necessarily an imitation of
that historic fact. If the writer of the More scene
needed any pattern to follow, he could have found it
in the speech in which old Clifford equally wins the
rebels under Cade to his side. Nevertheless, there
seems a fair certainty of some kind of connection
between the '147 lines' and Julius Caesar^ as well as
between these lines and the Jack Cade scenes.

But what Schiicking has failed to notice is that
there are also parallels with Troilus and Cressida at
least as striking as the parallels with Julius Caesar:
and, further, many parallels with Coriolanus^ in the
bulk more striking than those with any other play of
Shakespeare whatsoever. And many data, such as
Tylney's censoring of the play, make it unreasonable
to regard it as an imitation of Coriolanus. Nor can
the parallels with Coriolanus be dismissed by supposing
that the writer of the '147 lines' was following up
hints in Shakespeare's early plays, and so anticipated
expressions which Shakespeare himself came to use
later. In Troilus and Cressida the final result of
insubordination is likened to a wolf who must 'last

i46 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

eat up himself.' In both More and Coriolanus the
phrase is, that men 'would feed on one another.'
That the More-writer, imitating Shakespeare's earlier
phrase, should have happened exactly to anticipate his
later one, would surely be most unlikely — it would be
easier to dismiss all the three phrases as mere accidental
coincidence. Yet, as we shall see later, when we con-
sider these phrases in their context, such a way out is
hardly possible either. And this instance is only one
of many.

Before coming, however, to this consideration of
phrase and figure, it is worth noting that there is an
extraordinary likeness in the general outlook upon
state affairs. ' I am of the same politics,' Tennyson
once said, 'as Shakespeare, Bacon, and every sane
man.' Views shared by every sane man will not carry
us very far on our work of identification. But even
people, like the late Sir Walter Raleigh, who have
little sympathy with the attempt to 'classify Shake-
speare's political convictions and reduce them to a
type,' feel that Shakespeare is a

passionate friend to order: he views social order as part of
a wider harmony: his survey of human society and of the
laws that bind man to man is astronomical in its rapidity and
breadth: when his imagination seeks a tragic climax the
ultimate disaster and horror commonly presents itself to
him as chaos: he extols government with a fervour that
suggests a real and ever present fear of the breaking of the
flood-gates1.

Now when, in 1907, Sir Walter Raleigh described
Shakespeare's standpoint in these words, he was think-
ing more especially of the great speech of Ulysses on
'degree' in Troilus and Cressida. There was no
1 Shakespeare, pp. 19 1-2.

IN THE THREE PAGES 147

thought of Sir Thomas More. But, if we try to
describe the speech of More, can formulas more ap-
propriate than these be framed ? And these phrases do
not describe a general temper: language suggesting a
fear of the breaking of the flood-gates is not common
to every sane man.

No doubt in Tudor England fear of anarchy was
peculiarly strong. And playwrights were defenders of
order: for 'Plays,' says Heywood, in his Apology for
Actors^

are writ with this aim, and carried with this method, to
teach. . .subjects true obedience to their king, to show people
the untimely ends of such as have moved tumults, com-
motions and insurrections, to present them with the flourish-
ing estate of such as live in obedience, exhorting them to
obedience, dehorting them from all traitorous and felonious
stratagems.

But the passion, the fear, the insistence upon social
order as part of an even greater whole, how often do
we find these expressed as they are in Shakespeare,
and in this speech of More? Heywood gives us scenes
of popular violence in his Edward IF; so does Dekker
in Sir Thomas Wyatt; so does the anonymous author
of Jack Straw; so do other collaborators in the play
of Sir Thomas More. But the method of Heywood,
Dekker and the other writers is as unlike that of the
writer of the ' 147 lines' and of Shakespeare as these
two last are like each other. To More, rebellion
means not so much the end of the rebel, as the end of
all things:

Had there such fellows lived when you were babes...

. . .the bloody times
Could not have brought you to the state of men.

More does not stoop to terrorize the rebels, as Hey-

10 — 2

1 48 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

wood might have done with 'the untimely ends of
such as have moved tumults': there is no talk of
gibbets and the hangman, but rather of the necessity
of authority:

To kneel to be forgiven
Is safer wars than ever you can make
Whose discipline is riot: why even your wars
Cannot proceed but by obedience.

Ulysses, in his great paean in praise of authority, can
begin from no lower thesis than that

The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre,
Observe degree, priority and place.

What would otherwise be the intolerable insolence of
Coriolanus receives dignity from this passion for a
divinely ordained authority, be it that of the senate
('the noble senate who, under the gods, keep you in
awe') or of his mother. It is this which makes his
fall the greater when Coriolanus, of all men, stands

As if a man were author of himself

And knew no other kin.

It is this which turns his fall into a triumph when, at
the price of his life, he raises his mother from her
knees to grant her request:

Your knees to me? to your corrected son?
Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach
Fillip the stars.

Let anyone read, two or three times, the speech of
More, and the speech of Ulysses on 'degree,' and then
turn to the great Tudor classic on rebellion, by Sir
John Cheke, The Hurt of Sedition, how grievous it is
to a Commonwealth (1549). Cheke was a statesman,
and among the chief prose writers of his time. In this
book of 1 20 pages he treats the subject at length, with

IN THE THREE PAGES 149

eloquence, vigour and common sense. He never
reaches the standpoint to which Shakespeare and the
author of the '147 lines' leap instantly. According
to Cheke, rebellion leads to a state of things un-
pleasant, difficult, dangerous, even very dangerous.
According to More or to Ulysses it leads to men
devouring each other like ravenous beasts or fishes:
it leads to sheer destruction. At the back of the mind
of both More and Ulysses seems to be a nightmare
vision of a world in chaos. This is not common:
Cheke comes, I think, nearer to the practical point
of view of the ordinary Englishman :

And now, when there is neither plenty of hay, nor sufficient
of straw, nor corn enough, and that through the great dis-
order of your lewd rebellion, can ye think ye do well?

Owing to the rebellion of Ket and his followers

Diverse honest and true-dealing men are not able to pay
their accustomable rent at their due time.

Cheke enumerates the evils of sedition:

When sedition once breaketh out, see ye not the laws over-
thrown, the magistrates despised, spoiling of houses,
murthering of men, wasting of countries, increase of dis-
order, diminishing of the realm's strength, swarming of
vagabonds, scarcity of labourers, and all those mischiefs
plenteously brought in, which God is wont to scourge
severely withal, war, dearth and pestilence?

To Shakespeare, and to the writer of the ' 147 lines,'
the disregard of order does not merely lead up to such
commonplace scourges as war, dearth and pestilence.
Both More and Ulysses depict disobedience as a more
terrible thing: a thing inconsistent with the order
which even war demands: a thing leading straight to
anarchy. Cheke points out to the rebels that they

1 5o THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

cannot expect to enjoy all the advantages and none
of the disadvantages of rebellion: 'the inconvenience
hereof cannot only nip others, but also touch you.'
More makes the same point, but how differently.
Suppose the rioters, by their tumult, succeed in
forcing the government to carry out their wishes.
What will be the result?

Not one of you should live an aged man.

Ulysses leaps to the same conclusion :

Take but degree away, untune that string...
And the rude son should strike his father dead.

How are we to account for this difference between
Cheke and the author of More or Troi/us? So far as
contemporary conditions go, the realm was nearer
chaos in the days of Cheke than when these plays
were written. The root of the difference lies in the
mind of the individual. And where else in Elizabethan
drama shall we find just that same kind of passion and
underlying fear which we find in Shakespeare and in
the great speech of More?

But the likeness only begins here: if we had no
more than this it would prove nothing. Even more
striking than the similarity of outlook is the similarity
— often even the identity — of image and phrase and
word with which it is enforced.

But before passing on, in the next section, to
examine this, we must stop to ask — Is there anything
unlike in the outlook of Shakespeare and of this speech
of More? For it has been argued that More places
the claims of kingly authority higher than even
Shakespeare would have done.

Shakespeare, it is said,

was far from being a believer in the divinity of kings. He

IN THE THREE PAGES 151

treats the theory with mordant irony in Richard II, placing
it on the lips of the hapless king, and proving its insufficiency
by the remorseless logic of subsequent events1.

But what do we mean by the 'divinity of kings' ? In
the sense in which Richard II appeals to this divinity,
neither Shakespeare nor any other thinker has ever
believed in it. Richard places his reliance upon
miracles:

This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones
Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king
Shall falter under foul rebellion's arms.

We have not to wait for the 'remorseless logic of
subsequent events' to prove the insufficiency of this:
it is reproved instantly by the Bishop of Carlisle:

Fear not, my lord: that Power that made you king
Hath power to keep you king in spite of all.
The means that heaven yields must be embraced
And not neglected ; else, if heaven would,
And we will not, heaven's offer we refuse,
The proffer'd means of succour and redress.
Aumerle. He means, my lord, that we are too remiss ;
Whilst Bolingbroke, through our security,
Grows strong and great, in substance and in power.

Richard indignantly rejects the advice of the Bishop.
But the Bishop's words are consistent with the
strictest legitimist belief. Indeed, when Bolingbroke
proceeds to 'ascend the regal throne' it is this very
Bishop of Carlisle who interposes :

I speak to subjects, and a subject speaks,
Stirr'd up by God, thus boldly for his king.
My lord of Hereford here, whom you call king,

1 Moorman on 'Plays attributed to Shakespeare' in the
Cambridge History, V. 248-9.

152 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

Is a foul traitor to proud Hereford's king;
And, if you crown him, let me prophesy

And then comes an appeal to 'the remorseless logic of
subsequent events' — the Wars of the Roses.

The speech of More has in it the ring of peculiarly
deep conviction and present fear: the speech of the
Bishop of Carlisle has this equally: but it has some-
thing more. Shakespeare goes beyond the dramatic
needs of the immediate situation, and uses his own
knowledge of later history, thereby securing to the
legitimist argument that prestige which accrues from
prophecy fulfilled:

O, if you raise this house against this house,

It will the woefullest division prove

That ever fell upon this cursed earth:

Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so,

Lest child, child's children, cry against you 'woe'!

Bolingbroke gets the throne: but in argument, at any
rate, the dramatist 'takes care that the Whig dogs
should not have the best of it.' It is surely impossible
to maintain that the man who wrote this would not
have gone as far as the writer of More's great speech
goes. What More tells the crowd of rioters — that
God has lent the king his throne and sword, and called
him a 'god on earth,' is a mere Tudor commonplace.
Listen to Cheke:

That that is done by the magistrate is done by the ordinance
of God, whom the scripture oftentimes doth call God, be-
cause he hath the execution of God's office. How then do
ye take in hand to reform ? Be ye kings ?

By 'the magistrate' Cheke means the king or his
deputy. Writing under a protectorate he chooses the
vaguer term. But it is immaterial, for he says:

IN THE THREE PAGES 153

There can be no just execution of laws, reformation of
faults, giving out of commandments, but from the king.
For in the king only is the right hereof, and authority of
him derived by his appointment to his ministers.

That the king, and the magistrates appointed by him,
are executing God's office

Of dread, of justice, power and command

would surely have been admitted universally in Tudor
times. The view has, as More claims, sound apostolic
authority1. It is going much further2 when Shake-
speare makes the Bishop of Carlisle protest, whatever
the king's misdeeds, against the claim of parliament
to depose him. As to the 'remorseless logic of subse-
quent events' refuting this protest, we must remember
that Richard II is one of eight plays dealing with the
fortunes of the houses of Lancaster and York. We
see the strong efficient Bolingbroke worn into pre-
mature age and death as the result of his act:

God knows, my son,
By what by-paths, and indirect crook'd ways
I met this crown ; and I myself know well
How troublesome it sat upon my head...

. . .Therefore, my Harry,
Be it thy course, to busy giddy minds
With foreign quarrels —

The advice is carried out. On the eve of his great
victory we see the son's penitence:

1 Romans xiii. 1-5; 1 Peter ii. 13, 14. For the 'king' as
'god' cf. Psalms xlv. n (in the Prayer-Book version, and in
Parker's revision of the Bishops' Bible), 'So shall the king have
pleasure in thy beauty, for he is thy Lord God' following the
Vulgate 'quoniam ipse [rex] est Dominus Deus tuus.'

2 Compare the view of King James I, as reported by
Gardiner, History of England (1883), I. 291.

154 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

O, not today, think not upon the fault
My father made in compassing the crown.

But bloodshed in France avails nothing in the long
run to avert bloodshed in England. The saintly grand-
son is equally conscious of the weakness of his title,
and loses all. In Henry FI, with its figures of the 'son
that hath killed his father' and 'the father that hath
killed his son,' Shakespeare had already helped to stage
what he now foretells:

In this seat of Peace, tumultuous wars

Shall kin with kin, and kind with kind confound;

Disorder, Horror, Fear and Mutiny

Shall here inhabit, and this land be call'd

The field of Golgotha, and Dead Men's Skulls.

Of this field of Golgotha Richard of Gloucester be-
comes king. And, after all his murders, Richard
knows that they are in vain unless he can gain the
hand of his niece Elizabeth, the true heiress:

Without her, follows to this land and me...
Death, desolation, ruin and decay.

Only when the Lancastrian claimant is betrothed to
Elizabeth, is the evil which the Bishop of Carlisle
had foretold brought to its end. Richmond's words
before his victory echo those of the Bishop:

If you do free your children from the sword,
Your children's children quit it in your age.

The Bishop assuredly does not rate the divine right
of the king lower than Sir Thomas More. We may
say, if we like, that, despite everything, the speech of
the Bishop has merely dramatic value, and does not
represent Shakespeare's own view. We may believe
that both speeches were written merely to placate
authority. But to assume that the speech of More

IN THE THREE PAGES 155

represents the real view of its author: that the speech
of the Bishop of Carlisle represents the reverse of the
real view of its author: and that therefore they cannot
be the work of one and the same man, is surely absurd.
It is curious that this passage about God having
'given the king his name' and commanded obedience
to him, should have caused such searching of heart.
It is the one really commonplace thing in More's
speech; it is based upon well-known passages of
scripture; it is emphasized, as we have seen, in Cheke's
pamphlet, in Elizabethan times the locus classicus
on the subject of sedition; yet Schiicking sees in it
evidence that the speech of More belongs to Stuart
rather than to Elizabethan times r. On the contrary,
Gardiner has emphasized the fact that the divine
right of kings was a theory more popular in the earlier
than in the later of the two periods :

The divine right of kings had been a popular theory when
it coincided with a suppressed assertion of the divine right
of the nation. Henry VIII and Elizabeth had prospered,
not because their thrones were established by the decree of
Heaven, but because they stood up for the national inde-
pendence against foreign authority 2.

No doubt a reader of to-day feels that More's
speech dwells rather on the claims of authority than

1 In connection with this theory of an early Stuart date, we
may note that both Moorman and Schiicking speak as if the
life by Cresacre More were a source of the play. This would
mean not merely a Stuart date, but a date too late to be con-
sistent with Tylney's censorship and many other indisputable
data. But of the three episodes where Dyce had suggested a
connection, two are taken by Cresacre More from earlier lives,
and the third is told so differently as to preclude the idea of
direct connection.

* Gardiner, History of England (1884), IX. 145.

156 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

on its responsibilities. But we have seen how Shake-
speare also extols government. It is not so easy to
refute the irreverent American democrat when, amid
much that is exaggerated and absurd, he writes 'There
can easily be too much liberty according to Shake-
speare, but the idea of too much authority is foreign
to him.'

ii. Repetition

But not only does Sir Thomas More share with
the Bishop of Carlisle, Ulysses, and Coriolanus their
passionate feeling for 'degree,' and their passionate
fear of chaos; what is more significant is that in
expressing these things they all speak the same tongue.
Here again it is useful to start from a fact pointed out
by Sir Walter Raleigh, which will be accepted as
beyond controversy. Little as Shakespeare repeated
himself, there are 'echoes that pass from one play to
another' : ' I have seen the time,' says Justice Shallow,
4 with my long sword I would have made you four tall
fellows skip like rats1': Lear says:

I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion
I would have made them skip 2.

Certain ideas were linked in Shakespeare's mind, and
this coupling recurs with a curious similarity, in spite
of differing circumstances: at one time, it may be, in
an elaborate simile, at another in a single line or even
word. Thus the idea that adversity tests character as
a tempest tests ships, is expressed by Coriolanus in
twenty words 3, by Nestor (naturally) in nearly as
many lines 4. So, too, Macbeth echoes Richard III.

1 Merry Wives, Act II. Sc. i. 2 Lear, Act V. Sc. iii.

3 iv. i. 7-8. 4 Troilus, I. iii. 33, etc.

IN THE THREE PAGES 157

Obviously, in any question of authorship, we must
be careful not to be betrayed into the argument that
two authors are the same man because they use the
same metaphor. Nevertheless, compare the way in
which confusion in the faculties of a lover is likened,
equally by Bassanio and by Angelo, to a disorderly
throng of subjects crowding round a beloved prince:
Bassanio. Madam, you have bereft: me of all words,
Only my blood speaks to you in my veins;
And there is such confusion in my powers,
As, after some oration fairly spoke
By a beloved prince, there doth appear
Among the buzzing, pleased multitude;
Where every something, being blent together
Turns to a wild of nothing....
Angelo. Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,
Making both it unable for itself,
And dispossessing all my other parts
Of necessary fitness?... even so
The general, subject to a well-wish'd king,
Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness
Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love
Must needs appear offence.
The one passage was written under Elizabeth, the
other under James. The 'beloved prince' becomes a
'well-wished king' who does not relish popular ap-
plause: but there is little other difference.

Therefore, if the speech of Sir Thomas More be
Shakespeare's, we may reasonably expect More's
figures regarding government to reappear (changed
to suit the speaker's circumstances) in those passages
in Shakespeare's undoubted works where this question
of authority and mob-law is discussed. Such passages
are the speech of Ulysses in Troi/us, and several scenes
in Corlolanus.

158 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

(a) If authority be impaired, there can be no end,
short of men devouring one another, like ravenous
fishes or beasts of prey. So Coriolanus thinks:
What's the matter, you dissentious rogues,
That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion
Make yourselves scabs?... Your affections are
A sick man's appetite, who desires most that

Which would increase his evil What's the matter,

That in these several places of the city
You cry against the noble senate, who,
Under the gods, keep you in awe, which else
Would feed on one another}1

If Marcius had been able to make his language a
little more conciliatory, he would have spoken exactly
like Sir Thomas More:

Grant... that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silenced by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed,
What had you got? I'll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man.
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another *.
The language of Coriolanus leaps over stages of
thought, as we expect that of any angry man to do,
let alone an angry man in one of Shakespeare's later
plays. But the thought which is explicit in More's
speech is implicit in that of Coriolanus, and leads
them both to their conclusion in this identical figure
involving an identical half-line.

1 Coriolanus, I. i. 168, etc.

2 Sir Thomas More, Addition II, 195-210.

IN THE THREE PAGES 159

„ Ulysses speaks at length, as More does, for he too
is explaining the result of anarchy, not denouncing it,
like Coriolanus. But Ulysses is explaining to a king,
not to a mob, so that the thought is expressed in
language of more measured dignity. It leads, however,
to the same conclusion :

Take but degree away, untune that string,

And hark, what discord follows! Each thing meets

In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters

Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores

And make a sop of all this solid globe:

Strength should be lord of imbecility,

And the rude son should strike his father dead :

Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong

Between whose endless jar justice resides,

Should lose their names, and so should justice too.

Then everything includes itself in power,

Power into will, will into appetite;

And appetite, an universal wolf,

So doubly seconded with will and power,

Must make perforce an universal prey,

And last eat up himself1-.

The rioters whom More is addressing are loyal to the
king. Agamemnon's authority has been flouted, but
he is still the Grecian general. Most people would
hold that there is no need to trouble yet with any
such thoughts as these of ravenous fishes and uni-
versal wolves eating up themselves. Shakespeare
would not.

(b) Ulysses' comparison of the insubordinate to
'bounded waters' lifting 'their bosoms higher than
the shores' is an ordinary one enough. It comes
again in Hamlet \

1 Troilus and Cressida, I. iii. 109, etc.

160 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

The ocean, overpeering of his list,
Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste
Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
O'erbears your officers.

But when we come to Sir Thomas More and Corio-
lanus we find this ordinary comparison in contexts
which are quite extraordinarily alike. In Afore,
Surrey and Shrewsbury enter and try to speak, whilst
the leader of the mob, in an effort to still the tumult,
exclaims to his followers 'Peace, I say, Peace! Are
you men of wisdom, or what are you ? ' The young
noble, Surrey, interjects a scoffing 'What you will
have them, but not men of wisdom.' This naturally
provokes an outburst from the crowd : 'We'll not hear
my lord of Surrey, No, No, No, No, No. ' Then More
first speaks:

Whiles they are o'er the bank of their obedience
Thus will they bear down all things.

And, at the invitation of the mob, More then tries
what can be effected by a less provocative style of
address from a man in humbler station.

It is with a similar metaphor that Cominius hurries
Coriolanus off the scene:

Will you hence
Before the tag return ? Whose rage doth rend
Like interrupted waters, and o'erbear
What they are used to bear.

And Menenius is left behind to patch matters on
behalf of ' the consul ' :

Sic. Consul! What consul?

Men. The consul Coriolanus.
Bru. He consul!

Citizens. No, No, No, No, No.

IN THE THREE PAGES 161

Men. If by the tribunes' leave, and yours, good people
I may be heard — l

Holding Corioli in the name of Rome,
Even like a fawning greyhound in the leash
To let him slip at will2.

Now Lartius, who with his troops is in occupation of
Corioli, is certainly holding it like a hound in the
leash. But what is the signification of

To let him slip at will ?

We must not think that his love of field-sports is
making Shakespeare carry on a figure after it has
ceased to be relevant. If we turn back 40 lines, we
see Lartius calling together the governors of the town
which he has won by force:

Go, sound thy trumpet in the market place,
Call thither all the officers o' the town
Where they shall know our mind.

Lartius neither destroyed the town nor annexed it to
Rome: it is understood that it 'will be delivered back
on good condition.' Meanwhile the unfortunate
magnates are having a poor time. Lartius is

Condemning some to death, and some to exile;
Ransoming him or pitying, threatening the other;

The picture at the back of Shakespeare's mind is that
of armed force dictating to a punished, terrorized,
puppet government; and this reminds him of a hound
being slipped from the leash, to follow whatever prey
his master chooses, and that only.

1 in. i. 247, etc. 2 1. vi. 37, etc.

p 11

162 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

Now, as has been pointed out above, the rebels in
Sir Thomas More are not disloyal to the king. But it
is A lore's object to show them that their demand for
the banishing of foreigners, urged as it is by violence,
is a dictation to the government which cannot be
allowed :

You'll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
And lead the majesty of law in liom
To slip him like a hound'1.

(d) Besides these three figures, used in More's
speech to illustrate the action of the crowd, other
images are passing through the writer's mind, and
though these images have doubtless been used by
others besides Shakespeare, the frequency with
which these Shakespearian echoes recur is extra-
ordinary:

And that you sit as kings in your desires.

Simpson 2 long ago was reminded of

Whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
Or any of these all, or all, or more,
Entitled in thy parts do crowned sit 3,

And you in ruff of your opinions clothed,

'ruff' (i.e. heat, pride) 'of opinions' suggests the idea
of clothing, and so is elaborated into a metaphor. So
in CoriolanuSj 'rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,'
suggests a further metaphor.

(e) Alike in the '147 lines' and in Richard II,

1 Addition II, 242.

2 Notes and Queries, Fourth Series, viil. p. 2, 1871. Simpson
also called attention to 'ruff of opinions.'

3 Sonnet 37.

IN THE THREE PAGES 163

similar language is used when the king is exalted as
the figure of God,

And, to add ampler majesty to this,

God hath not only lent the king his figure,

His throne, his sword, but given him his own name

Calls him a god on earth....1

And shall the figure of God's majesty,
His Captain, Steward, Deputy elect,
Anointed, crowned, planted many years,
Be judged by subject and inferior breath,
And he himself not present?2

(/) Again, in both Coriolanus and the ' 147 lines,'
the majesty of the state is compared to the majesty
of God or the heavens, and contrasted with the un-
disciplined impotence of the rioters, who are advised
to use their knees in prayer rather than their arms or
hands in right:

What do you then
Rising 'gainst him that God himself installs
But rise 'gainst God} What do you to your souls,
In doing this, O desperate as you are?
Wash your foul minds with tears, and those same hands
That you like rebels lift against the peace,
Lift up for peace, and your unreverent knees
Make them your feet, to kneel to be forgiven
[Is safer wars than ever you can make
Whose discipline is riot.... 3]

You may as well
Strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them
Against the Roman state; whose course will on
The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs

1 Sir Thomas More, Addition II, 224-7.

* Richard II, iv. i. 125.

3 Sir Thomas More, Addition II, 227-36.

11 — 2

i64 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

Of more strong link asunder than can ever
Appear in your impediment. For the dearth,
The gods, not the patricians, make it, and
Your knees to them, not arms, must help1.

Here the parallels are certainly less striking. In the
first case the wickedness, in the second the futility of
rebellion is emphasized: in one case prayer for for-
giveness is recommended, in the other prayer against
dearth. The resemblances may be accidental.

is) 'You... whose discipline is riot,' says Sir
Thomas More. Jack Cade says the same,
But then are we in order when we are most out of order2.

(h) Note the extraordinary likeness with which
the attempt of the speakers to get a hearing, and the
interrupters calling for silence, are depicted in More
and in Julius Caesar ',

Surrey. Friends, Masters, Countrymen —

Mayor. Peace, ho! Peace! I charge you keep the peace.

Shrew. My masters, Countrymen —

Sher. The noble earl of Shrewsbury, let's hear him.

Compare,

Brutus. My Countrymen, —

Sec. Cit. Peace, Silence! Brutus speaks.

First Cit. Peace, ho!

Brutus. Good countrymen, let me depart alone....

Or,

Antony. You gentle Romans —

AIL Peace, ho! Let us hear him....

Antony. Friends, Romans, Countrymen.... 3

1 Coriolanus, I. i. 69, etc.

2 iv. ii. 200. This, like the 'argo' mentioned below, comes in
the First Folio, but not in the Contention.

3 in. ii.

IN THE THREE PAGES 165

(/) And it may be an accident that the two earliest
examples of the verb 'to shark' quoted in the' New
English Dictionary are the one in More and the one in
Hamlet. So may the choice of words by which the
rebels are admonished 'give up yourself to form,'
whilst Menenius undertakes to produce Coriolanus.

Where he shall answer by a lawful form.

But the argument of accidental resemblance, to be
convincing, must be used with economy. The question
is whether the eleven resemblances noted above (five
or six of them striking) are not more than can be
fairly expected to occur accidentally within less than
one hundred lines.

And they do not suggest imitation; many of them
point rather to those subtle links of thought by which
ideas are associated in one mind.

We must add to these resemblances in the 97
lines, spoken by the exponents of order, the further
points of resemblance in the 50 lines devoted to
the mob.

iii. The Common People in Shakespeare

For the writer of the ' 147 lines' resembles Shake-
speare in the words and conduct of his common people
no less than in the oratory of his statesmen. The part
played by the halfpenny loaf in 2 Henry ^7 and More
is obvious; so is the logic-chopping discourse of the
rioters with their 'argo': 'our country is a great
eating country, argo they eat more in our country
than they do in their own.' We have the wrestling
metaphor 'have us on the hip,' which, unless Dyce

1 66 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

is quite at fault, was used more frequently by Shake-
speare than by most people1.

But what is most striking is that the writer at-
tributes to his crowd strongly contrasted qualities,
good and bad. Shakespeare does the same: as Tenny-
son says, 'It is the glory of Shakespeare, he can give
you the incongruity of things.' Shakespeare has there-
by puzzled generations of critics, who are unable to
appreciate such incongruity.

And, first we must note that in the words of Mr
Bradley, Shakespeare's poor and humble 'are, almost
without exception, sound and sweet at heart, faithful
and pitiful :.' Bradley is speaking of those two plays
where Shakespeare seems least at peace with human
nature, Timon and Lear; plays in which the faithful
steward and Gloster's old tenant, the servants and the
fool, form a contrast to well-born traitors and time-
servers. But, as Bradley says, Shakespeare's feeling on
this subject, though apparently specially keen at this
time of his life, is much the same throughout. We
have Adam in As Tou Like It^ the faithful groom and
the pitiful gardener in Richard II.

1 The expression 'have upon the hip' says Dyce 'though
twice [rather thrice] used by Shakespeare, is not of frequent
occurrence' {Sir Thomas More, p. 25) and again in his Remarks
(1844, p. 52), 'the commentators are evidently at a loss for an
example of this phrase in some other writer.' A good many
examples have been collected since the time of Dyce, and one
of these points to the phrase having been fairly common: 'If he
have us at the advantage, "on the hip" as <we say' (Andrews, 'A
Sermon preached before the King's Majesty at Whitehall,'
16 1 7, cf. Arrowsmith, in Notes and Queries, Series 1, vir. 376,
1853). Nevertheless the three examples in Shakespeare {Mer-
chant, 1. iii. 46; iv. i. 350; Othello, 11. i. 338) show him to have
been unusually fond of the metaphor.

2 Shakespearean Tragedy, 1905, p. 326.

IN THE THREE PAGES 167

Further, even in his ridicule of humble folk,
Shakespeare generally shows a loving touch. The
keen sympathy of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch1 has
taught us to see this even in Stephano, ' in extremity
to be counted on for the fine confused last word of
our mercantile marine, "Every man shift for all the
rest." ' And all must agree with Walter Bagehot that
Shakespeare was ' sympathizingly cognizant with the
talk of the illogical classes2.' If Hippolyta is bored by
Bottom and his company, and cannot conceal her
impatience, Shakespeare did not expect us to see them
with her eyes. The story of Much Ado, as Shakespeare
found it, was one in which all the actors belonged to
gentle circles, and the solution came from the con-
fession of one or other of the courtly culprits. Shake-
speare added Dogberry, Verges and the Watch. He
delighted in them: and in the hands of the absurd
Watch of Messina he placed the detection of the plot
which had deceived all the nobles, and against which
even Beatrice could suggest no better remedy than,
'Kill Claudio.' Further, Shakespeare's love of irony
has led him to arrange the order of events, so as to
bring Leonato face to face with Dogberry and the
detected plot before the wedding. If Leonato, instead
of dismissing Dogberry as 'tedious' had possessed
Shakespeare's 'kindly fellow-feeling for the narrow
intelligence necessarily induced by narrow circum-
stances,' he would have saved himself considerable
trouble, at the expense of wrecking the catastrophe
of the play.

Despite anything the gentles may say, we love
Bottom and we love Dogberry: even Carlyle so far

1 The Tempest, Cambridge, 1921: Introduction, liv.

2 Bagehot, Literary Studies, 1879, I. 146 (Shakespeare).

1 68 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

overcame his dislike of fools as to love Dogberry.
Yet when, instead of 'Dogberry' or 'Bottom,' we
read 'ist Citizen,' or '2nd Citizen,' we are very
prone to see them, if not with the eyes of Coriolanus,
at any rate of a patrician partizan. And it must be
granted that in 2 Henry VI the picture is partizan:
the crowd is foolish and murderous. Yet even here,
the touches which are most Shakespearian are pre-
cisely those which are least venomous. But we have
seen that though the crowd in the '147 lines' (with
its 'argo' and its economic fallacies concerning the
halfpenny loaf) reminds us of Jack Cade and his
followers, we are on safer ground if we compare it
with the crowds in Coriolanus and in 'Julius Caesar,
crowds which are ^tt/zW/y of Shakespeare's own making.

We may admit that Shakespeare hated and despised
the tribunes in Coriolanus with a bitterness which he
rarely felt towards any of his creatures. And we may
admit (with reservations) that in Shakespeare 'when
a "citizen" is mentioned, he generally does or says
something absurd '.' But Shakespeare did not dislike
absurd people, and demonstrably he did not dislike the
mob in Coriolanus.

We must remember that the plebeians as a whole
(apart from the tribunes) never have a chance of seeing
Marcius' bearing to his fellow patricians. All they
can see of him is that he is a valiant soldier, and that
he hates them fanatically. It is in their hearing that
Marcius says:

Would the nobility lay aside their ruth,
And let me use my sword, I'ld make a quarry
With thousands of these quarter'd slaves, as high
As I could pick my lance.

1 Bagehot, Literary Studies, 1879, I. 160.

IN THE THREE PAGES 169

Now the citizens are starving, and in arms: it is little
wonder that they are determined to kill Marcius, 'for
the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread, not in
thirst for revenge' : ' He's a very dog to the common-
alty.' The citizens have no cause to suspect, as we
who know him better have, that he is a dog whose
bark is worse than his bite. Nevertheless, listen to the
second citizen:

Sec. Cit. Consider you what services he has done for his
country ?

First Cit. Very well : and could be content to give him good
report for't, but that he pays himself with being
proud.

Sec. Cit. Nay, but speak not maliciously.

First Cit. I say unto you, what he hath done famously, he
did to that end: though soft-conscienced men
can be content to say it was for his country, he
did it to please his mother, and to be partly
proud : which he is, even to the altitude of his
virtue.

Sec. Cit. What he cannot help in his nature, you account
a vice in him.

The second citizen has a charity which should cover
a multitude of sins.

The tumult is appeased, Marcius again wins honour
in the war, and the citizens are magnanimous enough
to support their old enemy against all competitors for
the consulship. This comes of course from Plutarch:
but Plutarch makes it clear that up to this point there
had not been on either side the exasperation which
Shakespeare depicts. Such scenes as the plebeians
seeking to kill Marcius, or Marcius threatening
massacre to thousands of the plebeians, are out of the
question, at this stage, in Shakespeare's source. All

I/O

THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

the greater, you may say, Shakespeare's estimate of the
changeableness of the citizens: but assuredly all the
greater his estimate of their generosity and forgive-
ness. Listen to their talk:

First Cit. Once, if he do require our voices, we ought not
to deny him.

Sec. Cit. We may, sir, if we will.

Third Cit. We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a
power that we have no power to do : for if he
show us his wounds, and tell us his deeds, we
are to put our tongues into those wounds and
speak for them; so, if he tell us his noble deeds,
we must also tell him our noble acceptance of
them. Ingratitude is monstrous: and for the
multitude to be ingrateful, were to make a
monster of the multitude; of which we being
members, should bring ourselves to be mon-
strous members.

The citizens recall a bitter old gibe of Marcius', but
only as subject for good natured chaff, half admitting
it to be true. And the Third Citizen sums up ' I say,
if he would incline to the people, there was never a
worthier man.' And though their speech is grotesque,
the citizens also are worthy men.

And all this frank generosity Marcius rewards by
open scorn, and by a haughty refusal to show his
wounds according to custom. The citizens are sur-
prised: nevertheless they do not at first go back upon
their decision to support him against his rivals:

Third Cit. But this is something odd.

Sec. Cit. An 'twere to give again — but 'tis no matter.

When the different groups of two or three, who have
been talking to Marcius, meet together again in a

IN THE THREE PAGES 171

body, they find that they have all been mocked alike,
though even here the voice of charity is heard:

First Cit. No, 'tis his kind of speech; he did not mock us.

If we compare carefully the citizens' report of Mar-
cius' demeanour with his actual words, there is no
misrepresentation, except on the part of the charitable
citizen. Then the tribunes intervene and denounce
the 'childish friendliness' that would yield voices 'to
him that did not ask but mock,' whilst refusing votes
to those who ask in proper form:

He did solicit you in free contempt
When he did need your loves; and do you think
That his contempt shall not be bruising to you
When he hath power to crush ?

Of course, it is because he so badly needs their voices
that Marcius has been insolent to the citizens. He is
too proud to flatter. It is a proof of the meanness of
spirit of the tribunes that, whilst they know Marcius
well enough to play on his weaknesses, they never
understand his nobility. Still, their argument looks
logical enough, and we cannot wonder that, so ad-
monished, the citizens decide to refuse Marcius:

He's not confirm'd: we may deny him yet.

Which of us, in their place, would have done other-
wise?

Now, not only is this not Plutarch's story: it is the
direct reverse of Plutarch's story:

Now Martius, following this custom, showed many wounds
and cuts upon his body, which he had received in seventeen
years' service at the wars, and in many sundry battles,
being ever the foremost man that did set out feet to fight.
So that there was not a man among the people but was

1 72 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

ashamed of himself to refuse so valiant a man; and one of
them said to another, We must needs choose him consul,
there is no remedy. But when the day of election was come,
and that Marcius came to the market place with great pomp,
accompanied with all the Senate and the whole nobility of
the city about him, who sought to make him consul with
the greatest instance and entreaty they could, or ever
attempted for any man or matter; then the love and good
will of the common people turned straight to an hate and
envy toward him, fearing to put this office of sovereign
authority into his hands, being a man somewhat partial
toward the nobility....

And, to point the moral, North adds a marginal note,
'See the fickle minds of common people.' In Plutarch,
then, the change is due solely to the political fears of
the plebeians, and there is no hint, at this point, of
scornful bearing on the part of Marcius: if his friends
err, it is by making too great entreaty on his behalf.
Nor is there any question here in Plutarch of inter-
ference on the part of the tribunes. Shakespeare has
altered the facts, as he received them, to exonerate
the people at the expense of their leaders, and, above
all, of Marcius.

Then, when he learns that the citizens will no
longer support him, Shakespeare's Marcius exclaims,
'Have I had children's voices' (as though he himself
were not the cause of the change), and proposes to
deprive the people of their liberties 'and throw their
power i' the dust.' The tribunes answer by accusing
him of treason, and demanding his punishment. Here
again Shakespeare has altered his authority. In
Plutarch, the people reject Marcius and elect his
rivals consuls: and there for the moment matters rest:
it is later, as a private senator, and with no claim of

IN THE THREE PAGES 173

his own to the consulship, that Marcius proposes to
take the office of tribune from the people. Shake-
speare's main object in making this change is no
doubt to hasten the action: but it also has the effect
of justifying the citizens. When Marcius, regarded
by the nobility as consul elect, and so regarding him-
self, meets the opposition of the plebeians by proposing
the destruction of all their liberties, what can the
citizens do, except back their leaders in demanding
his banishment? For 'he hath power to crush.'

Yet, even at this stage, Menenius (who should
know, and who does not flatter the people except
sometimes to their face) believes that, if Marcius will
but utter a few gentle words, it will not only save him
from banishment ('save what is dangerous present')
but even now gain him the consulship ('save the loss
of what is past'). If he will but recant publicly what
he has spoken, ^^ their heam wgre you^

For they have pardons, being ask'd, as free
As words to little purpose.

But it cannot be: for between the headstrong temper
of Marcius, and the venomous malice of the tribunes,
who deliberately play upon that temper, the citizens
are as helpless as Othello in the toils of Iago.

The fickleness of the citizens in Julius Caesar, and
the effect upon them of the legacies in Caesar's will,
have been the theme of many moralists. Certainly
the citizens change their minds. Yet it was a difficult
problem. The world has never been able to make up
its mind upon this act of Brutus. Swift puts Brutus
with Sir Thomas More among the six noblest of men :
Dante with Cassius and Judas as one of the three
basest: yet we blame the handicraft men of Rome

174 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

because they cannot decide directly; ay, and briefly;
ay, and wisely.

The citizens are instantly carried away by Antony's
appeal to their pity for fallen greatness, and by the
sincere sorrow of a man for his friend. They are won
over to Antony's side before he makes any mention
of Caesar's will. It increases their indignation,
naturally, when they hear that the man who has been
done to death as a public enemy had made the public
his heirs. (I am defending their hearts, not their
heads.) But, at the sight of Caesar's mantle they
forget all, and are rushing off to seek the conspirators,
when Antony calls them back:

Why, friends, you go to do you know not what:
Wherein hath Caesar thus deserved your loves ?
Alas, you know not; I must tell you then;
You have forgot the will I told you of.

The Roman citizens in Shakespeare are honest
fellows, whose difficulty in keeping to any fixed view
is due chiefly to their own generous impulses, and to
the faults and crimes of their 'betters.' They are
rightly grateful to Caesar for his services to the state.
They are rightly grateful to Pompey. When the
tribunes reproach them for ingratitude in forgetting
Pompey while celebrating Caesar,

They vanish tongue-tied in their guiltiness.

They cannot help it that one of their idols has killed
the other. Quite rightly they do not wish Caesar to
become king. Quite rightly, when the conspirators
kill Caesar, they demand satisfaction. If Shakespeare
intended us to despise the crowd, why did he show us
them convinced by the speech of the noble Brutus,
rather than by the less noble arguments that Cassius

IN THE THREE PAGES 175

must have used? Brutus appeals to his personal in-
tegrity. Antony argues that the conspirators were
moved by envy. The people are convinced by each
speaker in turn: and with much reason, for

All the conspirators, save only he,
. Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He only, in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.

If the crowd are overcome, it is by no ignoble hand.
It is right that the citizens should listen with respect
and approval to the rather austere patriotism of
Brutus. But Shakespeare has shown us Antony
standing alone over the body of Caesar, and we see
that though in addressing the crowd he may employ
sophistry, his passionate sorrow for Caesar is sincere
enough. This has its effect on the crowd, as it must
have had on any body of generous men : ' Poor soul,
his eyes are red as fire with weeping': 'There's not a
nobler man in Rome than Antony.' The citizens are
sometimes spoken of as prejudiced. Is it not rather
the case that they have no sufficient convictions, or
even prejudices, to save them from their impulses?
One is reminded of Burke's words on the usefulness
of prejudice. If the crowd in Coriolanus had shown
more prejudice, things might have gone better. It is
the foolish good-nature of the citizens which tempts
Coriolanus to his destruction. A more implacable
crowd would have made it obvious to the enemy of
the people that, if he could not control his contempt
of the electors, he must

Let the high office and the honour go.

When, in the end, the third citizen says, 'That we
did, we did for the best; and though we willingly

176 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

consented to his banishment, yet it was against our
will,' there is, as so often in Shakespeare, real truth
beneath this inconsequent nonsense.

As shown, then, in the Roman plays, the crowd is
often absurd in speech; it resents scorn; it is easily
swayed and excited, and when excited it is prone to
lynch indiscriminately. On the other hand, it is
warm-hearted, grateful, and in Coriolanus (where
alone the question of forgiveness arises) the mob is,
as Menenius admits, eminently forgiving. Further,
Shakespeare is willing to take liberties with his
sources, in order to bring out the noble side. This is
noteworthy in the man who put the great speech on
'degree' into the mouth of Ulysses.

And Shakespeare, in a way even more noteworthy,
showed this belief in the responsiveness of the crowd
to a noble appeal. The crowd that thronged the Globe
theatre 'asked for bloodshed, and he gave them
Hamlet: they asked for foolery, and he gave them
King Lear.'' And, in return, he received 'all men's
suffrage.'

Surely, of all people, an Elizabethan playwright-
actor-manager must have known what he thought of
the crowd. It would have been strange, if the man
who was to make such an appeal, and receive such a
response, had at any time thought meanly of the
crowd. It is not strange that he thought meanly of
the baser kind of demagogue. He who had given his
noblest, and thereby had become 'the applause, de-
light, the wonder of our Stage,' had the right to
condemn those who seek popularity by an ignoble
appeal. But when, over and over again, he altered
history, with the effect of making the action of a
crowd of Roman mechanicals more generous, I am

IN THE THREE PAGES 177

bold enough to believe that it is not rash to suppose
that he knew what he was doing.

iv. The Common People in the '147 lines*

The crowd in the ' 147 lines' are, like the Shake-
spearian crowd, absurd in speech, especially when
most trying to be logical. They resent scorn, and are
stung to passion by the contempt of the Sergeant and
of Surrey. They are easily swayed and excited, and
are in a mood as murderous as that of the citizens
who would kill Marcius, or the citizens who do kill
Cinna the poet. 'We will show no mercy upon the
strangers' they say. More, who has no reason to
exaggerate their ferocity, says:

you'll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses.

And, whilst they have all the dangerousness of the
crowd in Shakespeare, they are at the same time made
to speak that peculiar dialect which Shakespeare, with
his ' kindly fellow-feeling for the narrow intelligence
necessarily induced by narrow circumstances' puts
into the mouths of his citizens and clowns. Who can
fail to love a rioter whose grievance against the aliens
is that 'they bring in strange roots, which is merely
to the undoing of poor prentices, for what's a sorry
parsnip to a good heart?' When the mob are calling
on More to speak, Doll Williamson finds a truly
Shakespearian reason why the crowd should listen
to him rather than to his colleagues:

Let's hear him : a keeps a plentiful shrevaltry, and a made
my brother Arthur Watchins Sergeant Safe's yeoman : let's
hear Shrieve More.

This is the kind of argument Mistress Quickly would

178 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

have used. But Shakespeare, says Walter Bagehot,
'would never have interrupted Mrs Quickly; he saw
that her mind was going to and fro over the subject;
he saw that it was coming right, and this was enough
for him.' It is so with Doll's mind:

More. Good masters, hear me speak.

Doll. Ay, by the mass, will we, More, th'art a good house-
keeper, and I thank thy good worship for my brother
Arthur Watchins.

All. Peace, Peace.

More. Look, what you do offend you cry upon
That is the peace

And when More pauses, Doll is the first to show that
she feels the truth of his argument.

More places before these absurd and illogical
rioters the loftiest arguments on behalf of authority.
And he is successful. It is an act of faith, as Shake-
speare's plays were, and it meets with the same
response.

We have already seen how very Shakespearian
much of this argument is. It is an appeal to duty,
from many points of view. To each appeal the crowd
listens patiently, and in the end gives complete assent.
More terrorizes the mob, not by putting before them
the penalties involved by the failure of their enter-
prise, but the penalties involved by its success:

Alas, poor things, what is it you have got
Although we grant you get the thing you seek?

The overthrow of authority, he argues, will end in
disaster for them. And with amazing clear-sighted-
ness the leaders of the crowd see the force of the
argument:

Nay, this a sound fellow, I tell you, let's mark him.

IN THE THREE PAGES 179

Then More goes on to appeal to the larger whole. To
seek the death of the aliens by the overthrow of
authority is to be in arms against God. The effect of
this argument upon the rioters is instant. Then, from
duty to God, More passes to duty to our neighbour.
And here comes the only reference to punishment,
introduced, not for its own sake but as an illustration;
not as a thing specially interesting either the speaker
or his audience, but as a stage in the argument.
Supposing the king should be so merciful as merely to
banish the rebels, how would they like to be treated
abroad as they are treating the aliens in London?
And, again, with amazing magnanimity, the rebels
agree:

Faith a says true, let us do as we may be done by.

Then, as they surrender, the rebels entreat More to
stand their friend and procure their pardon. More
refers them to the Lord Mayor, and the great nobles
whom they had just shouted down,

Submit you to these noble gentlemen,
Entreat their mediation to the king,
Give up yourself to form, obey the magistrate,
And there's no doubt but mercy may be found,
If you so seek it.

More is merely sheriff: in the presence of superior
officers he cannot promise pardon, but refers the
crowd hopefully to those in authority.

Now the writer of the '147 lines' is not responsible
for having made the rioters listen to reason in the
words of More. That, though not historical, was part
of the prearranged plot to which he had to write.
But he is responsible for the loftiness of the argu-
ments which he puts into the mouth of More, and

12 — 2

180 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

to which he makes the crowd assent. The obvious
thing to have dwelt upon would have been the fear
of punishment and the hope of pardon.

The first version of More's speech — the version
which was superseded by the '147 lines' — is almost
all lost. But in More's soliloquy beforehand, what he

is thinking of is ., , 51,..

° the law s debt

Which hangs upon their lives,

and the fact that unthinking men who join a rebellion

incur
Self penalty with those that raised this stir1.

Three lines of a speech in which the rebels are per-
suaded to surrender are preserved:

To persist in it, is present death; but if you yield yourselves,
no doubt what punishment you in simplicity have incurred,
his highness in mercy will most graciously pardon2.
All. We yield, and desire his highness' mercy.

[They lay by their weapons.

References in the other scenes make it clear that, in
the first draft, what More did was to secure, in ex-
change for a promise of pardon, the surrender of the
crowd, terrorized by the threat of present death.

Nothing could be more unlike this than the argu-
ments which in the '147 lines' appeal to the crowd.
The appeal is to generosity, fair-play, pity; to those
motives which orators as dissimilar as More, Menenius,
and Antony know will sway a crowd which is 'sound
and sweet at heart, faithful and pitiful.' And all the
time, the same writer is laughing at the absurd want
of logic of this same crowd. More must be listened to

1 Addition II, 112, etc.

2 11. *473-6.

IN THE THREE PAGES 181

because 'a made my brother Arthur Watchins Ser-
geant Safe's yeoman.'

v. Conclusion

Now a passionate advocacy of authority, such as
we find in the speeches of Ulysses and of More, is
likely enough to be combined with such keen feeling
of the instability and absurdity of the crowd as we
find in the same scene in More, or in Coriolanus, or in
"Julius Caesar. But it is remarkable to find it com-
bined with such confidence in the generosity of the
common people as we also find in these three plays.
Was such a view common at any period of history?
It is assuredly not the view that Shakespeare is in the
habit of putting dramatically into the mouth of either
aristocrat or demagogue. Menenius comes near it.
And Menenius is one of those characters of whom
one feels that Shakespeare approved; and never more
so than when Menenius summed up the character of
the citizens in a dozen words exactly corresponding
to Shakespeare's picture of them: 'they have pardons,
being asked, as free as words to little purpose.' But
this breadth of view is uncommon.

Shakespeare's aristocrats as a class are more prone
to dwell upon the faults of the rabble than upon their
generosity or forgiveness. And accordingly recent
critics have represented Shakespeare as an enemy of
the people, and contrasted him with other English
poets, above all with Milton 'as to whose fidelity to
democracy there can indeed be no question.' It is
often forgotten that this denunciation of the crowd
is a commonplace of English poetry : of Chaucer with
his 'stormy peple unsad and ever untrewe' : of Spenser

182 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

with his 'raskal meny': of Milton to whom the
people are 'a herd confused, a miscellaneous rabble'

Of whom to be dispraised were no small praise1.

There is, however, this essential difference. Shake-
speare puts his bitter words into the mouth of the
blunt Casca, or of Coriolanus or Cleopatra in their
wrath. As Dr Bradley points out, his noblest
characters do not use language like this. But Chaucer
and Spenser are speaking in their own persons. And
Milton does not scruple to put his words of cold and
biting contempt into the mouth of Christ himself.

What is peculiar about Shakespeare is not that he
can see where the crowd goes wrong, but that he can
see where it goes right: and above and beyond all,
what is characteristic of him and of the author of the
'147 lines' is the ability to see both things together.
It is not so with his contemporaries. Before they
draw a mob-scene, they make up their minds whether
they are in sympathy with the mob, or out of sym-
pathy. If they are out of sympathy, we get mob-
scenes like those in "Jack Straw, or Heywood's
Edward IV, in which the bad qualities of the mob
are depicted without relief2. If they are in sympathy,
then we have such a picture as that given in the other
mob-scenes of Sir Thomas More, where the play-
wrights treat with respect not only the general at-
titude of the rioters, but for the most part the actual
words in which they explain themselves. In these

1 See the excellent article by Prof. Frederick Tupper on
'The Shaksperean Mob,' Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc. Amer. XXVH.
486-523 (1912).

2 I take it that the bearing of the citizens in Philaster (Act V.
Sc. iv.) is deliberately assumed to impress Pharamond with fear
of the 'wild cannibals' into whose hands he has fallen

IN THE THREE PAGES 183

other scenes the prentices may break into slang and
catchwords, and the clown may crack clownish jokes,
but the leaders of the mob make plain, straightfor-
ward, sensible speeches. The dramatist makes them
say what he in their place would have said. When we
turn to the '147 lines,' Lincoln and Doll Williamson
are different people. It is not that the author of the
'147 lines' does not think as highly of Doll and
Lincoln as the other writers. He does. The mag-
nanimity of the argument More is about to address to
them, and to which they are to respond, is a proof.
But in the meantime he makes them talk typical
Shakespearian nonsense.

Now this mixture, so far as I know, is quite
peculiar to Shakespeare.

In his treatment of that kind of politics which is inwoven
with human nature (says Coleridge), Shakespeare is quite

peculiar Hence you will observe the good-nature with

which he seems always to make sport with the passions and
follies of a mob, as with an irrational animal. He is never
angry with it, but hugely content with holding up its
absurdities to its face; and sometimes you may trace a tone
of almost affectionate superiority, something like that in
which a father speaks of the rogueries of a child.

That Coleridge is right in judging this attitude to
be peculiar, is proved by Shakespeare's critics. For
the most part they cannot conceive it possible that
a man should, at the same time, laugh at the crowd
and love it. The greatest Shakespearian critics have
assured us that because in Coriolanus and elsewhere,
Shakespeare shows dislike for mob-orators, hatred of
mob-violence and amusement at mob-logic, therefore
he disliked and despised the mob. So HazJitt on
Coriolanus :

1 84 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

Shakespear... seems to have spared no occasion of baiting
the rabble.... The whole dramatic moral of Coriolanus is
that those who have little shall have less, and that those who
have much shall take all that others have left. The people
are poor; therefore they ought to be starved.... They are
ignorant; therefore they ought not to be allowed to feel
that they want food, or clothing, or rest — that they are
enslaved, oppressed and miserable.

So, from a very different point of view, Walter
Bagehot :

The author of Coriolanus never believed in a mob, and did
something towards preventing anybody else from doing so.
. . . You will generally find that when a ' citizen ' is mentioned,
he does or says something absurd. Shakespeare had a clear
perception that it is possible to bribe a class as well as an
individual, and that personal obscurity is but an insecure
guarantee for political disinterestedness.

Moreover, he hath left you all his walks,
His private arbours and new planted orchards
On this side Tiber.

Dowden enters a caveat to the effect that the
'citizens' do not always say absurd things, and he
reminds us, j ustly, of the citizens in Richard III. But
otherwise he accepts Bagehot's view of the crowd in
Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, and quotes it at length.
(Yet Dowden insists also on the good and kindly
instincts of the crowd in Coriolanus.)

Sir Sidney Lee speaks of the emphasis laid (in
Coriolanus) on the ignoble temper of the rabble, even
though he points out later that the faults of the
aristocratic temper are equally censured.

Sir Walter Raleigh classes Julius Caesar and Corio-
lanus with 2 Henry VI, as plays in which 'the common
people are made ludicrous and foolish,' without hint-

IN THE THREE PAGES 185

ing that in the two Roman plays the common people
show other characteristics than absurdity and folly.

1 Here (in Coriolanus)^ says Prof. Schelling, c even
more pronouncedly than in Caesar and elsewhere,
have we Shakespeare's contemptuous attitude towards
the mob, which he regards as a thing utterly thought-
less, fickle, and imbecile.'

' The great mind of Shakespeare,' says Mr Mase-
field, speaking of Coriolanus^ * brooding on the many
forms of treachery, found nothing more treacherous
than the mob.'

Georg Brandes assures us that ' the good qualities
and virtues of the people do not exist for Shakespeare *
and that he 'seized every opportunity to flout the
lower classes; he always gave a satirical and repellent
picture of them as a mass.'

A short treatise, written in order to prove Shake-
speare the consistent enemy of the people, has achieved
the unusual honour of being within a year translated
into French and German, and further of having in-
spired Tolstoi to write his indictment of Shakespeare's
works as 'trivial, immoral, and positively bad.' And
Tolstoi's indictment has encouraged Mr Bernard
Shaw to denounce 'Shakespeare's snobbery,' 'his
vulgar prejudices,' 'his ignorance,' 'his weakness and
incoherence as a thinker.'

Here we may draw the line.

But others, like Stopford Brook, perceiving that
Shakespeare makes the crowd behave quite generously,
would therefore see in Coriolanus ' the artistic record
of the victory of a people, unrighteously oppressed,
over their oppressor.' So the tragedy of mother and
son is turned into a party pamphlet: 'Shakespeare, but
not so openly as to offend his patrons, was in sympathy

1 86 THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS

with the people': we may make Shakespeare a hypo-
crite and a coward, if only thereby we can acquit him
of being a Conservative.

It is the rarest thing to find a critic, like Mr A. C.
Bradley1, who does not deny Shakespeare's sympathy
with one side or the other. Yet this sympathy is
demonstrable. It becomes doubly sure when we com-
pare Coriolanus with Plutarch. The brief comparison
I have outlined above was made without reference to
Mr MacCallum's Shakespeare's Roman Plays. But,
if the reader is not convinced by my statement, let
him turn to Mr MacCallum (pp. 484-548). There
he will find the comparison set out more fully and
more ably than I have drawn it. In view of this
comparison, there can be no possible doubt that Mr
Bradley is right, when he says that

the Roman citizens are fundamentally good-natured, like
the Englishmen they are, and have a humorous conscious-
ness of their own weaknesses. They are, beyond doubt,
mutable, and in that sense untrustworthy; but they are not
by nature ungrateful, or slow to admire their bitterest
enemy. False charges and mean imputations come from
their leaders, not from them.

Now, the scene added to Sir Thomas More, brief
as it is, displays these good and the bad characteristics
of the crowd in such stark and glaring contrast that
even the most partizan of us cannot deny the presence
of both. Let us, for the moment, lay aside all question
of the authorship of the More-Wnes. Whoever wrote
them, they suffice to show that an Elizabethan
dramatist might possess all Shakespeare's sense for
'degree': that further he might make a mob act as
violently, talk as absurdly, and change as rapidly as

1 A moderate view is also taken by Mr H. N. Hudson.

IN THE THREE PAGES 187

the mob talk, act and change in Shakespeare; and that
nevertheless he might remain convinced of the good-
ness of heart of the mob, and the certainty of its
appreciating the case for generosity and moderation,
if such case is honestly put. For that is the whole
drift of the scene. We see an honest man telling the
crowd what he holds to be the truth, however un-
palatable that truth may be: and the crowd proceed
to act on it.

Having grasped this fact, let us turn again to
Shakespeare. If such impartiality was possible for the
author of the More-scene, why is it impossible for
Shakespeare? And a careful reading shows that
Shakespeare is equally impartial : takes in fact exactly
the same view. A study of the More-scene should
enable us, babes and sucklings, to avoid an error into
which the most wise and prudent of critics have fallen.

Now, if a new passage of Shakespeare's writing
were discovered, what might reasonably be expected
of it is this: that (whether we recognised it as the
work of Shakespeare or not) it would throw light
upon, and add to our appreciation of, those passages
in the known works of Shakespeare which are most
nearly parallel. And this is just what the More-scene
does.

VI
ILL MAY DAY

BEING SCENES FROM THE PLAY OF

SIR THOMAS MORE

VII
SPECIAL TRANSCRIPT

OF THE

THREE PAGES

Edited by W. W. Greg

I9I

Note on the Text

THE following is an attempt to supply a consecutive
and more or less readable text of the insurrection scenes
of More after they had undergone extensive revision
and were in the form in which, so it is contended, they were
submitted to the Censor. His comments thereon will be
found in the footnotes. The original is written in four several
hands which differ widely from one another not only in
appearance but in their habits of spelling, punctuation and
all graphic details. Only complete normalization could
have produced a uniform text, and in this the whole
character of the original would have been lost. Some lack
of uniformity in the following pages was judged a lesser
evil: at the same time an attempt has been made to avoid
mere eccentricity. The very erratic distinction in the use of
English and Italian script, in which two out of the four
hands indulge, has been ignored; contractions, particularly
common in D, have been expanded. In the use of capital
letters and to a lesser extent of punctuation some latitude has
been allowed: for instance speeches have been made to
begin with a capital and end with a stop and proper names
have been capitalized: at the same time it has been sought
to preserve the general usage of each hand in these respects.
Mutilations in the manuscript have been indicated by rows
of dots of a length corresponding to the original lacuna, or
else the missing words have been conjecturally supplied
within brackets. Brackets also distinguish a few accidental
omissions of the scribes, and likewise supplementary head-
ings. The original spelling has, of course, been faithfully

i92 NOTE ON THE TEXT

preserved, and anyone who cares to compare the habits that
distinguish Munday, and hands B and D respectively, will
find I think an interesting field of study. It is perhaps worth
remembering that Munday, whose spelling is almost regular
and (but for his trick of writing 'looue' etc.) astonishingly
modern, had been apprenticed to a printer.

*93

[ILL MAY DAY
scenes from] The Booke of

SIR THOMAS MOORE

[Scene I. — A street in the City.]

Enter at one end Iohn Lincolne with [the Hvo Bettses] Fol. 3*
together, at the other end enters Fraunces de [Barde, and
Do//] a lustie woman, he haling her by the arme.

Doll. Whether wilt thou hale me?

Bard. Whether I please, thou art my prize and I pleade

purchase of thee.
Doll. Purchase of me? away ye rascall, I am an honest
plaine carpenters wife and thoughe I haue no
beautie to like a husband yet whatsoeuer is mine
scornes to stoupe to a straunger: hand off" then
when I bid thee.

Bard. Goe with me quietly, or He compell thee.
Doll. Compell me ye dogges face? thou thinkst thou 10
hast the goldsmithes wife in hand, whom thou
enticedst from her husband with all his plate, and
when thou turndst her home to him againe,
madste him (like an asse) pay for his wifes boorde.

Bard. So will I make thy husband too, if please me.

Fol. $a. In the margin the censor has written the note:
'Leaue out ye insurrection wholy & ye Cause ther off & begin
w* Sr Tho: Moore att ye mayors sessions w* a reportt afterwards
off his good servic don being Shriue off Londo vppo a mutiny
Agaynst ye Lu bards only by A shortt reportt & nott otherwise
att your own perrilles E Tyllney'.

Sc. i. Part of the original text in the handwriting of Anthony
Munday.

p 13

i94 ILL MAY DAY SCENES

Enter Coueler with a poire of dooues, Williamson
the carpenter and Sherwin following him.

Doll. Here he comes himselfe, tell him so if thou darste.
Caue. Followe me no further, I say thou shalt not haue

them.
Wil. I bought them in Cheapeside, and paide my

monie for them. 20

Sher. He did Sir indeed, and you offer him wrong,
bothe to take them from him, and not restore
him his monie neither.
Caue. If he paid for them, let it suffise that I possesse
them, beefe and brewes may serue such hindes,
are piggions meate for a coorse carpenter?
Lin. It is hard when Englishmens pacience must be
thus ietted on by straungers and they not dare to
reuendge their owne wrongs.
Geo. Lincolne, lets beate them downe, and beare no 30

more of these abuses.
Lin. We may not Betts, be pacient and heare more.
Doll. How now husband? what, one straunger take
thy food from thee, and another thy wife? bir
Lady flesh and blood I thinke can hardly brooke
that.
Lin. Will this geere neuer be otherwise? must these

wrongs be thus endured?
Geo. Let vs step in, and help to reuendge their iniurie.
Bard. What art thou that talkest of reuendge? my Lord 40
Ambassadour shall once more make your Maior
haue a check, if he punishe thee not for this
saucie presumption.

27. From this line on practically the whole of the scene has
been marked for omission (by having a line drawn down the
margin) and 27-9, 33-9 have been crossed out as well, apparently
by Tilney.

FROM SIR THOMAS MORE 195

Wil. Indeed my Lord Maior, on the Ambassadours
complainte, sent me to Newgate one day, be-
cause (against my will) I tooke the wall of a
straunger. You may doo anything, the gold-
smiths wife, and mine now must be at your
commaundment.
Geo. The more pacient fooles are ye bothe to suffer it. 5o

Bard. Suffer it? mend it thou or he if ye can or dare,
I tell thee fellowe, and she were the Maior of
Londons wife, had I her once in my possession,
I would keep herin spiteof him that durst say nay.
Geo. I tell thee Lombard, these wordes should cost
thy best cappe, were I not curbd by dutie and
obedience. The Maior of Londons wife? Oh
God, shall it be thus?
Doll. Why Bettes, am not I as deare to my husband,

as my Lord Maiors wife to him, and wilt thou 60
so neglectly suffer thine owne shame? Hands off
proude stranger or [by] him that bought me, if
mens milkie harts dare not strike a straunger,
yet women will beate them downe, ere they
beare these abuses.

Bard. Mistresse, I say you shall along with me.
Doll. Touche not Doll Williamson, least she lay thee
along on Gods deare earthe. {to Caueler.) And
you Sir, that allow such coorse cates to carpenters,
whilste pidgions which they pay for, must serue 70
your daintie appetite: deliuer them back to my
husband again or He call so many women to
myne assistance, as weele not leaue one inche
vntorne of thee. If our husbands must be brideled
by lawe, and forced to beare your wrongs, their
wiues will be a little lawelesse, and soundly
beate ye.

13 — 2

196 ILL MAY DAY SCENES

Caue. Come away de Bard, and let vs goe complaine
to my Lord Ambassadour. Exeunt amho.

Doll. I, goe, and send him among vs, and weele giue 80
him his welcome too. I am ashamed that free-
borne Englishmen, hauing beatten straungers
within their owne boun[ds] should thus be
brau'de and abusde by them at home.
Sher. It is not our lack of courage in the cause, but the
strict obedience that we are bound too: I am the
goldsmith whose wrongs you talkte of, but how
to redresse yours or mine owne, is a matter be-
yond all our abilities.

Lin. Not so, not so my good freends, I, though a 90
meane man, a broaker by profession and namd
Iohn Lincolne, haue long time winckt at these
vilde ennormitecs with mighty impacience, and,
as these two bretheren heere (Betses by name)
can witnesse with losse of mine owne liffe would
gladly remedie them.

Geo. And he is in a good forwardnesse I tell ye, if all
hit right.

Doll. As how, I pre thee? tell it to Doll Williamson.

Lin. You knowe the Spittle Sermons begin the next 100
weeke, I haue drawne a [bill] of our wrongs,
and the straungers insolencies.

Geo. Which he meanes the preachers shall there
openly publishe in the pulpit.

Wil. Oh but that they would, yfaith it would tickle
our straungers thorowly.

Doll. I, and if you men durst not vndertake it before
God we women [would. Take] an honest
woman from her husband why it is intollerable.

92. <uoinckt\ t added, perhaps by C.

FROM SIR THOMAS MORE 197

Sher. But how finde ye the preachers affected to [our no

proceeding?]
Lin. Maister Doctor Standish

[rejforme it and doubts not but happie successe Fol. 3^

will ensu our wrongs. You shall

perceiue ther's no hurt in the bill, heer's a copie
of it, I pray ye, heare it.
All. With all our harts, for Gods sake read it.
Lin. (reads) To you all the worshipfull lords and 120
maisters of this Cittie, that will take compassion
ouer the poore people your neighbours, and also
of the greate importable hurts, losses and hinder-
aunces, wherof proceedeth extreame pouertie to
all the Kings subiects, that inhabite within this
Cittie and subburbs of the same. For so it is that
aliens and straungers eate the bread from the
fatherlesse children, and take the liuing from all
the artificers, and the entercourse from all mer-
chants wherby pouertie is so much encreased, 130
that euery man bewayleth the miserie of other,
for craftsmen be brought to beggerie, and mer-
chants to needines. Wherfore, the premisses con-
sidered, the redresse must be of the commons,
knit and vnited to one parte. And as the hurt
and damage greeueth all men, so must all men see
to their willing power for remedie, and not suffer
the sayde aliens in their wealth, and the naturall
borne men of this region to come to confusion.

Doll. Before God, tis excellent, and He maintaine the 140
suite to be honest.

Sher. Well, say tis read, what is your further meaning
in the matter?

198 ILL MAY DAY SCENES

Geo. What? marie list to me. No doubt but this will
store vs with freends enow, whose names we will
closely keepe in writing, and on May day next in
the morning weele goe foorth a Maying, but
make it the wurst May day for the straungers
that euer they sawe: how say ye? doo ye sub-
scribe, or are ye faintharted reuolters. 150

Doll. Holde thee George Bettes, ther's my hand and
my hart, by the Lord He make a captaine among
ye, and doo somewhat to be talke of for euer
after.

Wil. My maisters, ere we parte, lets freendly goe and
drinke together, and sweare true secrecie vppon
our hues.

Geo. There spake an angell, come, let vs along then.

Exeunt.

[Scene II, the Mayor's Sessions, has no connexion
with 111 May Day.]

[Scene III. The Council Chamber.]

Enter the Earles of Shrewesburie and Surrie, Sir Fol. 5
Thomas Palmer and Sir Roger Cholmeley.

Shrew. My Lord of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Palmer,
might I with pacience tempte your graue ad-

uise?
I tell ye true, that in these daungerous times,
I doo not like this frowning vulgare brow.

158. let] written lets and the s crossed out, though perhaps
only in modern ink.

Sc. iii. This (as well as the intervening Sc. ii) is again part
of the original text in Munday's hand.

1-8. Tilney has marked these lines in the margin and added
the note: 'Mend y's'.

FROM SIR THOMAS MORE 199

My searching eye did neuer entertaine,
a more distracted countenaunce of greefe
then I haue late obseru'de
in the displeased commons of the Cittie.
Sur. Tis straunge, that from his princely clemencie,
so well a tempred mercie and a grace, 1°

to all the aliens in this fruitefull land,
that this highe-creasted insolence should spring,
from them that breathe from his maiestick

bountie,
that fatned with the trafficque of our countrey:
alreadie leape into his subiects face.
Pal. Yet Sherwin['sJ hindred to commence his suite
against de Bard, by the Ambassadour
by supplication made vnto the King.
Who hauing first entic'de away his wife,
and gott his plate, neere woorth foure hundred

pound,

to greeue some wronged cittizens, that found,
this vile disgrace oft cast into their teeth:
of late sues Sherwin, and arrested him
for monie for the boording of his wife.
Sur. The more knaue Bard, that vsing Sherwins
goods,
dooth aske him interest for the occupation :
I like not that my Lord of Shrewesburie.
Hees ill bested, that lends a well pac'de horsse,
vnto a man that will not finde him meate.
Cholme. My Lord of Surrey will be pleasant still. 30

Pal. I beeing then imployed by your honors
to stay the broyle that fell about the same,
wher by perswasion I enforc'de the wrongs,
and vrgde the greefe of the displeased Cittie:
he answerd me and with a sollemne oathe

200

ILL MAY DAY SCENES

that if he had the Maior of Londons wife,
he would keepe her in despight of any Englishe.
Sur. Tis good Sir Thomas then for you and me,
your wife is dead, and I a batcheler
if no man can possesse his wife alone, 4°

I am glad Sir Thomas Palmer I haue none.
Cholme. If a take my wife, a shall finde her meate.
Sur. And reason good (Sir Roger Cholmeley) too.
If these hott Frenchemen needsly will haue

sporte,
they should in kindnesse yet deffraye the charge.
Tis hard when men possesse our wiues in quiet:
and yet leaue vs in to discharge their diett.
Shrew. My Lord, our catours shall not vse the markett,
for our prouision, but some straunger now:
will take the vittailes from him he hath bought. 50
A carpenter, as I was late enformde,
who hauing bought a paire of dooues in Cheape,
immediately a Frencheman tooke them from

him,
and beat the poore man for resisting him.
And when the fellowe did complaine his

wrongs:
he was seuerely punish'de for his labour.
Sur. But if the Englishe blood be once but vp,
as I perceiue theire harts alreadie full,
I feare me much, before their spleenes be

coolde,
some of these saucie aliens for their pride, 60

37. Tilney has crossed out Englishe and substituted ma
49. Tilney has crossed out straunger and interlined lombard
53. Tilney has crossed out frencheman and interlined
Lombard

57-70, 73-8 (?) are marked for omission, probably by Tilney.

FROM SIR THOMAS MORE 201

will pay for't soundly, wheresoere it lights.
This tyde of rage, that with the eddie striues:
I feare me much will drowne too manie liues.
Cholme. Now afore God, your honors, pardon me,

men of your place and greatnesse, are to

blame,
I tell ye true my Lords, in that his Maiestie
is not informed of this base abuse,
and dayly wrongs are offered to his subiects
for if he were, I knowe his gracious wisedome,
would soone redresse it. 7°

Enter a Messenger

Shrew. Sirra, what newes?
Cholme. None good I feare.
Mess. My Lord, ill newes, and wursse I feare will
followe
if speedily it be not lookte vnto.
The Cittie is in an vproare and the Maior,
is threatned if he come out of his house.
A number poore artificers]

fearde what this would come vnto. For.. $b

[ This followes on the doctours publishing

the bill of wrongs in publique at the Spittle. 80
Shrew. That doctor Beale may chaunce beshrewe him-
for reading of the bill. [selfe

Pal. Let vs goe gather forces to the Maior,

for quick suppressing this rebellious route.
Sur. Now I bethinke myselfe of Maister Moore,
one of the Sheriffes, a wise and learned gentle-
man,
and in especiall fauour with the people.
He backt with other graue and sober men,

202 ILL MAY DAY SCENES

may bv his gentle and perswasiue speeche
perhaps preuaile more than we can with power. 90
Shrew. Beleeue me, but your honor well aduises.
Let vs make haste, or I doo greatly feare:
some to their graues this mornings woorke will
beare. Exeunt.

[Scene IV. A Street in Saint Martin's-le-Grand.]

Enter Lincolne, Betses, Williamson, Sherwin and
other armed, Doll in a shirt of made, a head piece,
sword and buckler, a crewe attending.

Clo. Come come wele tickle ther turnips wele For., ja
butter ther boxes shall strangers rule the roste
but wele baste the roste come come a flawnt
a flaunte.
George. Brother giue place and heare Iohn Lincolne
speake.
Clo. I Lincolne my leder and Doll my true breder
with the rest of our crue shall Ran tan tarra
ran • doo all they what they can shall we be
bobd braude no shall we be hellde vnder no •
we ar fre borne and doo take skorne to be 10
vsde soe.

Sc. iv. This is a revised version written in hand B. The
earlier version, part of the original text in Munday's hand,
occupies the middle portion of fol. $b. The revision differs
little from the original except for the rather lamentable addition
of the Clown's part. There is no initial direction in the revision;
that printed above is taken from the original version, where it
was left standing when the text that follows was deleted. But
hand C has written in the margin the alternative direction:
'Enter Lincolne betts williamson Doll.' This ignores Sherwin,
who is undoubtedly present in both versions, but who may
nevertheless have been marked down for omission (see below,
Sc. vi). Fol. 6 contains a revision of a later scene misplaced.

6-1 1. Dyce prints this jingle as ten lines of verse.

FROM SIR THOMAS MORE 203

Doll. Pease theare I saye heare captaine Lincolne
speake.
Kepe silens till we know his minde at large.

Clo. Then largelye dilliuer speake bullie and he that
presumes to interrupte the in thie orratione this
for him.
Lincol. Then gallant bloods you whoes fre sowles doo
skorne
to beare the inforsed wrongs of alians
ad rage to ressolutione fier the howses
of theis audatious strangers: This is Saint Martins 20
and yonder dwells Mutas a welthy Piccarde
at the Greene Gate

de Barde Peter van Hollocke Adrian Martine
with many more outlandishe fugetiues
shall theis enioy more priueledge then wee
in our owne cuntry • lets become ther slaiues
since iustis kepes not them in greater awe
wele be ourselues rough ministers at lawe.
Clo. Vse no more swords nor no more words but fier
the howses braue captaine curragious fier me 30
ther howses.

Doll. I for we maye as well make bonefiers on maye
daye as at midsommer wele alter the daye in the
callinder and sett itt downe in flaming letters.

Sher. Staye no that wold much indanger the hole cittie
wher too I wold not the leaste preiudice.

Doll. No nor I nether so maie mine owne howse be
burnd for companye He tell ye what wele drag
the strangers into Morefeldes and theare bum-
baste them till they stinke againe. 40

21. mutas'] t altered from /probably by C.
Piccarde'] so in the original version ; miswritten piccardye in
revision.

2o4 ILL MAY DAY SCENES

Clo. And thats soone doone for they smell for feare
all redye.
Geor. Let some of vs enter the strangers houses

and if we finde them theare then bring them
forthe.
Doll. But if ye bringe them forthe eare ye finde

them He neare alowe of thatt.
Clo. Now Marsse for thie honner Dutch or
Frenshe so yt be a wenshe He vppon hir.

Exeunt some and Sherwin.
William. Now lads howe shall we labor in our saftie

I heare the maire hath gatherd men in armes 50
and that shreue More an hower agoe risseude
some of the privye cownsell in at Ludgate
forse now must make our pease or eles we fall
twill soone be knowne we ar the principall.
Doll. And what of that if thow beest afraide husband
go home againe and hide thy hed for by the
lord He haue a lyttill sporte now we ar att
ytt.
Geor. Lets stand vppon our swords and if they come

resseaue them as they weare our enemyes. 60
Enter Sherwin & the rest.

48. The direction has been supplied from the original ver-
sion; there is none in the revision.

49. Willia] written by C over Linco of B; the speech has
the prefix Will in the original version, and Doll's reply puts the
attribution beyond question.

59. Geor.'] B first wrote Lin again, but corrected it himself;
the original has Geo.

swords] original version Guarde, but the sense is 'rely on
our arms.'

60. enemyes] so in the original version ; B wrote eninemyes but
the i is crossed out, though perhaps only in modern ink.

The direction has been supplied from the original version;
there is none in the revision.

FROM SIR THOMAS MORE 205

Doll.
Clo.

Linco.

Sher.

Lincol.

Clo. A purchase a purchase we haue fownd we ha

fownde.

What.

Nothinge nott a Frenshe Fleminge nor a

Fleming Frenshe to be fownde but all fled in

plaine Inglishe.

How now haue you fownd any.

No not one theyre all fled.

Then fier the houses that the maior beinge
busye

aboute the quenshinge of them we maye skape 70

burne downe ther kennells let vs straite awaye

leaste this daye proue to vs an ill Maye daye.
Clo. Fier fier He be the firste

if hanginge come tis welcome thats the worste.

EiXBUtlt •

[Scene V. The Guildhall.]

Enter at on dore Sir Thomas Moore and Lord Fol. 7b
Maire: att another doore Sir Iohn Munday hurt.

L. Maior. What Sir Iohn Munday are you hurt.

74. The direction has again been supplied from the original
version. The revision has 'Manett Clowne', but this was added
in a different ink and hand, possibly by C, though it is not much
like his writing. It was evidently intended to carry the Clown
over to a revised version of the Prentice scene (see following
note).

Sc. v. This scene, written in hand C, belongs to the revision,
where it follows immediately on the revised version of Sc. iv.
It is not certain whether or not it had any prototype in the
original text, but it seems most likely that it is entirely new and
intended to replace the original fifth scene, the beginning of
which is still extant following on the original version of Sc. iv
at the foot of fol. 56. This fragment, in prose, presents a number
of Prentices playing at cudgels in Cheapside and no doubt in-
cluded the wounding of Sir John Munday as related in the
revisional scene. See below, p. 226.

206

ILL MAY DAY SCENES

Sir lohn. A little knock my lord ther was even now
a sort of premises playing at cudgells
I did comaund them to ther maisters howses
but one of them backt by the other crew
wounded me in the forhead with his cudgill
and now I feare me they are gon to ioine
with Lincolne Sherwine and ther dangerous

traine.
Moore. The captaines of this insurection

have tane themselves to armes • and cam but

now IO

to both the counters wher they have releast
sundrie indetted prisoners • and from thence
I heere that they are gonn into Saint Martins
wher they intend to offer violence
to the amazed Lombards therfore my lord
if we expect the saftie of the Cittie
tis time that force or parley doe encownter
with thes displeased men.

Enter a Messenger.

L. malor. How now what newes.

Mess. My Lord the rebel Is have broake open
Newegate
from whence they have deliverd manie

prisoners 20

both fellons and notorious murderers
that desperatlie cleave to ther lawles traine.
L. Maior. Vpp with the draw bridge gather som forces
to Cornhill and Cheapside. And gentle men •
If dilligence be vsde one every side
a quiet ebb will follow this rough tide.

Enter Shrowsberie Surrie Palmer • Cholmley.

i-8. Heavily marked for omission.

FROM SIR THOMAS MORE 207

Shro. Lord Maior his maiestie receaving notice •
of this most dangerous insurection •
hath sent my Lord of Surry and myself
Sir Thomas Palmer and our followers 3°

to add vnto [yjour forces our best meanes
for pacifying of this mutinie
In gods name then sett one with happie speed
the king laments if one true subiect bleede.
Surr. I heere they meane to fier the Lumbards
howses
oh power what art thou in a madmans eies
thou makst the plodding iddiott bloudy wise.

Moore. My Lords I dowt not but we shall appease
with a calm breath this flux of discontent.

Palme. To call them to a parley questionles 4°

may fall out good • tis well said Maister
Moore.

Moor. Letts to thes simple men for many sweat

vnder this act that knowes not the lawes debtt
which hangs vppon ther lives • for sillie men •
plodd on they know not how • like a fooles penn
that ending showes not any sentence writt
linckt but to common reason or sleightest witt
thes follow for no harme but yett incurr
self penaltie with those that raisd this stirr
A gods name one to calme our privat foes 5°
with breath of gravitie not dangerous blowes.

Exeunt.

44-7. Marked for omission, but a subsequent mark may be
intended to make the omission begin at 1. 45 only. The last
four words of 1. 45 are crossed out as well.

208 ILL MAY DAY SCENES

[Scene VI. The Gate of Saint Martin's-le-Grand.J

Enter Lincoln • Doll ' • Clown • Georg Betts Williamson
others and a Sergaunt at Armes.

Lincolne. Peace heare me, he that will not see a Fol. %c

red hearing at a Harry grote, butter at

alevenpence a pounde, meale at nyne

shillings a bushell and beeff at fower

nobles a stone, lyst to me.

Geo. Bett. Yt will come to that passe yf straingers

be sufferd mark him.

Linco. Our countrie is a great eating country,

argo they eate more in our countrey then

they do in their owne. 10

Betts Cloiv. By a half penny loff a day troy waight.

Line. They bring in straing rootes, which is

meerly to the vndoing of poor prentizes,

for whats a sorry parsnyp to a good hart.

William. Trash trash; they breed sore eyes and tis

enough to infect the Cytty with the palsey.

Sc. vi. The initial direction is written by C immediately
below the preceding scene. The next three pages of the manu-
script, written by hand D (believed to be Shakespeare's),
contain the revision of the earlier and larger portion of a scene,
the end of which is preserved and left standing in the original
text. C has again omitted Sherwin's name from the direction,
and has likewise removed him from the text of the revision (see
11- 35> 39 below): he is addressed in the original ending (1. 183)
though he has no part. This attempt to get rid of a minor but
still important character can only be due to difficulties of casting
and corroborates the evidence afforded by the occurrence of
Goodall's name (fol. 13*12) that the parts were actually
assigned.

6. Geo bett] substituted by C for other of D.

1 1. betts clotu'] substituted by C for other of D.

15. ivilljam'] substituted by C for oth of D.

FROM SIR THOMAS MORE 209

Lin. Nay yt has infected yt with the palsey,
for theise basterds of dung as you knowe
they growe in dvng haue infected vs, and
yt is our infeccion will make the Cytty 20
shake which partly corns through the
eating of parsnyps.
Clown • Betts. Trewe and pumpions togeather.

Seriant. What say you to the mercy of the king
do you refuse yt.

Lin. You woold haue vs vppon thipp woold
you no marry do we not, we accept of
the kings mercy but wee will showe no
mercy vppon the straingers.
Seriaunt. You ar the simplest things that euer 30
stood in such a question.

Lin. How say you now prenty[ssesj prentisses
simple down with him.

All. Prentisses symple prentisses symple.

Enter the Lord Maier Surrey Shrewsbury [Palmer
Cholmeley Afoore.]

Maior. Hold in the kings name hold.
Surrey. Frends masters countrymen.
Mayer. Peace how peace I charg you keep the
peace.
Shro. My masters countrymen.
Williamson. The noble Earle of Shrewsbury letts

hear him. 40

23. Clown • betts] substituted by C for o of D.

24. Seriant] C prefixed Enter but he had already brought
on the sergaunt at armes in his initial direction.

35. maior] substituted by C for Sher[<win] of D, which is
clearly an error, perhaps for Shrewsbury] .

39. williamson] substituted by C for Sher\_tvin] of D, which
was clearly intentional.

p 14

210

Ge. Betts.

Line.

Betts.

All.

Line.

Surr.

All.
Moor.

Line.
Doll.

All.

Moor.

All.

Lincolne Betts.

Moor.

Lineolne,

ILL MAY DAY SCENES

Week heare the Earle of Surrey.

The Earle of Shrewsbury.

Weele heare both.

Both both both both.

Peace I say peace ar you men of wisdome

or what ar you.

What you will haue them but not men

of wisdome.
Weele not heare my Lord of Surrey, no
no no no no Shrewsbury Shrewsbury].
Whiles they ar ore the banck of their

obedyenc 5°

thus will they bere downe all things.
Shreiff Moor speakes shall we heare
Shreef Moor speake.
Letts heare him a keepes a plentyfull
shrevaltry, and a made my brother
Arther Watchins Seriant Safes yeoman
lets heare Shreeve Moore.
Shrei ue Moor Moor M ore Shreue Moore.
Even by the rule you haue among your Fol. i

sealues
comand still audience. 60

Surrey Sury.
Moor Moor.
Peace peace scilens peace.
You that haue voyce and credyt with

the nvmber
comaund them to a stilnes.
A plaigue on them they will not hold

their peace
the deule cannot rule them.

41. Ge] prefixed by C.

66-7. These lines are divided after deule in the manuscript.

FROM SIR THOMAS MORE 211

Moor. Then what a rough and ryotous charge haue you
to leade those that the deule cannot rule
good masters heare me speake. 70

Doll. I byth mas will we Moor thart a good hows-
keeper and I thanck thy good worship for my
brother Arthur Watchins.
All. Peace peace.

Moor. Look what you do offend you cry vppon

that is the peace; not [on] of you heare present
had there such fellowes lyvd when you wer babes
that coold haue topt the peace, as nowe you woold
the peace wherin you haue till nowe growne vp
had bin tane from you, and the bloody tymes 80
coold not haue brought you to the state of men
alas poor things what is yt you haue gott
although we graunt you geat the thing you seeke.
Bett. Marry the removing of the straingers which
cannot choose but much advauntage the poor
handycraftes of the Cytty.

Moor. Graunt them remoued and graunt that this your
noyce
hath chidd downe all the maiestie of Ingland
ymagin that you see the wretched straingers
their babyes at their backs, with their poor lugage 90
plodding tooth ports and costs for transportacion
and that you sytt as kings in your desyres
aucthoryty quyte sylenct by your braule
and you in ruff of your opynions clothd
what had you gott; He tell you, you had taught
how insolenc and strong hand shoold prevayle
how ordere shoold be quelld, and by this patterne
not on of you shoold lyve an aged man
for other ruffians as their fancies wrought
88. maiestie] D wrote matte without contraction mark.

14 — 2

212 ILL MAY DAY SCENES

with seal f same hand sealf reasons and sealf right ioo
woold shark on you and men lyke revenous

fishes
woold feed on on another.

Doll. Before god thats as trewe as the gospell.
Lincoln. Nay this a sound fellowe I tell you lets mark
him.
Moor. Let me sett vp before your thoughts good freinds
on supposytion, which if you will marke
you shall perceaue howe horrible a shape
your ynnovation beres, first tis a sinn
which oft thappostle did forwarne vs of no

vrging obedienc to aucthoryty
and twere no error yf I told you all
you wer in armes gainst g[odJ.
All. Marry god forbid that. FoL- 9«

Moo. Nay certainly you ar

for to the king god hath his offyc lent

of dread of iustyce, power and comaund

hath bid him rule, and willd you to obay

and to add ampler maiestie to this

he hath not only lent the king his figure 120

his throne and sword, but gyven him his owne

name
calls him a god on earth, what do you then
rysing gainst him that god himsealf enstalls
but ryse gainst god, what do you to your sowles
in doing this o desperat as you are •

102. It is impossible to be certain whether D intended 'on
one another' or 'one on another.'

104. lincoln] substituted by C for Betts of D.

106. moor] supplied by C.

1 10- 1, 1 12-3. Each pair is written as one line by D, thus
completing the speech on the page.

FROM SIR THOMAS MORE 213

wash your foule mynds with teares and those

same hands
that you lyke rebells lyft against the peace
lift vp for peace, and your vnreuerent knees
make them your feet to kneele to be for-

gyven;
tell me but this what rebell captaine 13°

as mutynes ar incident, by his name
can still the rout who will obay a traytor
or howe can well that proclamation sounde
when ther is no adicion but a rebell
to quallyfy a rebell, youle put downe straingers
kill them cutt their throts possesse their howses
and leade the maiestie of law in liom
to slipp him lyke a hound; say nowe the king
as he is clement, yf thoffendor moorne
shoold so much com to short of your great

trespas 140

as but to banysh you, whether woold you go •
what country by the nature of your error
shoold gyve you harber go you to Fraunc or

Flanders
to any Iarman province, Spane or Portigall
nay any where that not adheres to Ingland
why you must needs be straingers, woold you

be pleasd
to find a nation of such barbarous temper
that breaking out in hiddious violence
woold not afoord you, an abode on earth
whett their detested knyves against your throtes 150
spurne you lyke doggs, and lyke as yf that god

13c. tell me but this] Before these words, interlined by C,
the equivalent of three lines has been crossed out by the same.
137. maiestie] D wrote matie without contraction mark.

2i4 ILL MAY DAY SCENES

owed not nor made not you, nor that the

elaments
wer not all appropriat to your comforts •
but charterd vnto them, what woold you thinck
to be thus vsd, this is the straingers case
and this your momtanish inhumanyty.
All. Fayth a saies trewe letts do as we may be
doon by.
Linco. Weele be ruld by you Master Moor yf youle

stand our freind to procure our pardon 160

Moor. Submyt you to theise noble gentlemen
entreate their mediation to the kinge
gyve vp yoursealf to forme obay the maiestrate
and thers no doubt, but mercy may be found
yf you so seek [yt].
All. We yeeld, and desire his highnesse mercie. Fol. i<

They lay by their weapons.
Moore. No doubt his maiestie will graunt it you

but you must yeeld to goe to seuerall prisons,
till that this highnesse will be further knowne.
All. Moste willingly, whether you will haue vs. 170
Shrew. Lord Maior, let them be sent to seuerall
prisons,

156. momtanish'] None of the proposed emendations, mount-
anish, mawmtanish, moritanish, is at all satisfactory.

157. D wrote letts <vs and <vs was crossed out, probably by C.
159. Linco] substituted by C for all repeated by D.
164-5. Written as one line by D in order to complete his

revision on the page.

Fol. gb is blank. The scene is continued in its original form
and in Munday's hand on fol. 10a. There is a slight overlap,
for the first three lines of the page (marked for omission) contain
the end of More's original speech. They are in prose and run:
'To persist in it, is present death • but if you yeeld yourselues,
no doubt, what punishment you (in simplicitie[)] haue in-
curred, his highnesse in mercie will moste graciously pardon.'

FROM SIR THOMAS MORE 215

and there in any case, be well intreated.
My Lord of Surrie, please you to take

horsse,
and ride to Cheapeside, where the Aldermen,
are with their seuerall companies in armes.
Will them to goe vnto their seuerall wardes,
bothe for the stay of further mutinie,
and for the apprehending of such persons:
as shall contend.
Sur. I goe my noble Lord. Exit Surrey.

Shrew, week straite goe tell his highnesse these good

newes. 180

Withall (Shreeue Moore) He tell him, how

your breath:
hath ransomde many a subiect from sad death.
Exeunt Shrewsbury and Cholmeley.
L.Maior. Lincolne and Sherwine, you shall bothe to
Newgate,
the rest vnto the Counters.
Pal. Goe, guarde them hence, a little breath well
spent,
cheates expectation in his fairst euent.
Doll. Well Sheriffe Moore, thou hast doone more
with thy good woordes, then all they could
with their weapons: giue me thy hand, keepe
thy promise now for the Kings pardon, or by 190
the Lord He call thee a plaine conie catcher.
Lin. Farewell Shreeue Moore, and as we yeeld
by thee
so make our peace, then thou dealst honestly.
Clo. I and saue vs from the gallowes eles a deales
dobble. They are led away.

194-5. The Clown's speech is added by B in the margin.

216 ILL MAY DAY SCENES

L Maior. Maister Shreeue Moore, you haue pre-

seru'de the Cittie,
from a moste daungerous fierce commotion.
For if this limbe of riot heere in Saint

Martins,
had ioynd with other braunches of the Cittie,
that did begin to kindle, twould haue bred, 200
great rage, that rage, much murder would

haue fed.
Moore. My Lord, and bretheren, what I heere haue

spoke,
my countries looue, and next, the Citties

care:
enioynde me to, which since it thus pre-

uailes,
thinke, God hath made weake Moore his

instrument,
to thwart seditions violent intent.
I thinke twere best my Lord, some two

houres hence,
we meete at the Guildehall, and there de-
termine,
that thorow euery warde, the watche be clad
in armour, but especially prouide 210

that at the Cittie gates, selected men,
substantiall cittizens doo warde tonight,
for feare of further mischeife.
L Maior. It shall be so.

Enter Shrewsbury.

201. After this two lines are marked for omission, the first
assigned to Pal\mer\, and the second to Shrewsbury], who
left the stage 1. 182, whence the deletion. They run: 'not Steele
but eloquence hath wrought this good. | you haue redeemde vs
from much threatned blood.'

FROM SIR THOMAS MORE

217

But yond me thinks my Lord of Shrewes-

burie.
Shrew. My Lord, his maiestie sends loouing thankes,
to you, your bretheren, and his faithful!

subiects
your carefull cittizens. But Maister Moore,

to you,
a rougher, yet as kinde a salutation,
your name is yet too short, nay, you must

kneele,
a knights creation is thys knightly Steele.
Rise vp Sir Thomas Moore.
Moore. I thanke his highnesse for thus honoring me.
Shrew. This is but first taste of his princely fauour,
for it hath pleased his high maiestie,
(noating your wisedome and deseruing

meritt,)
to put this stafFe of honor in your hand,
for he hath chose you of his Priuie Councell.
Moore. My Lord, for to denye my Soueraignes

bountie,
were to drop precious stones into the heapes
whence first they came,
to vrdge my imperfections in excuse,
were all as stale as custome. No my Lord,
my seruice is my Kings, good reason why:
since life and death hangs on our Soueraignes

eye.
L. Maior. His maiestie hath honord much the Cittie
in this his princely choise.
Moore. My Lord and bretheren,

though I departe for my looue shall rest

230. The second half of this line 'from whence they'd nere
returne,' has been crossed out with good reason.

220

230

218 ILL MAY DAY SCENES

I now must sleepe in courte, sounde sleepes Fol. io*

forbeare,
the chamberlain to state is publique care. 240
Yet in this rising of my priuate blood:
my studious thoughts shall tend the Citties

good.

Enter Croftes.

Shrew. How now Croftes? what newes?
Croftes. My Lord, his highnesse sends expresse com-
maunde,
that a record be entred of this riott,
and that the cheefe and capitall offendours
be theronstraitearraignde, for himselfe intends
to sit in person on the rest to morrowe
at Westminster.
Shrew. Lord Maior, you heare your charge.

Come good Sir Thomas Moore, to court let's

hye 250

you are th'appeaser of this mutinie.
Moore. My Lord farewell, new dayes begets new tides
life whirles bout fate, then to a graue it slydes.

Exeunt seuerally.

[Scene VII. Cheapside.]

Enter Maister Sheriff ey and meete a Messenger.

Sheriff. Messenger, what newes?

Mess. Is execution yet performde?
Sheriff. Not yet, the cartes stand readie at the stayres,

and they shall presently away to Tibourne.
Messe. Stay Maister Shreeue, it is the Councelles
pleasure,

Sc. vii. Part of the original text in Munday's hand.

FROM SIR THOMAS MORE 219

for more example in so bad a case,

a Iibbit be erected in Cheapside,

hard by the standerd, whether you must bring

Lincolne, and those that were the cheefe with

him,
to suffer death, and that immediatly. 10

Enter Officers.

Sheriff. ItshalbedooneSir. {exit Messenger.) Officers,
be speedie
call for a Iibbit, see it be erected,
others make haste to Newgate, bid them bring,
the prisoners hether, for they heere must dye,
Away I say, and see no time be slackt.
Off. WegoeSir.
Sheriff. Thats well said fellowes, now you doo your
dutie.

Exeunt some seuerally, others set vp the Iibbit.

God for his pittie help these troublous times.
The streetes stopte vp with gazing multitudes,
commaund our armed officers with halberds, 20
make way for entraunce of the prisoners.
Let proclamation once againe be made,
that euery housholder, on paine of deathe
keep in his prentises, and euery man,
stand with a weapon readie at his doore,
as he will answere to the contrary.
Off. He see it doone Sir. Exit.

Enter another Officer.

Sheriffe. Bring them away to execution,

the writt is come abooue two houres since,
the Cittie will be fynde for this neglect. 3°

17-30. Marked for omission.

220 ILL MAY DAY SCENES

Off. Thers such a preasse and multitude at New-
gate,
they cannot bring the cartes vnto the stayres
to take the prisoners in.
Sheriff. Then let them come on foote,

we may not dally time with great commaund.
Off. Some of the Benche Sir, thinke it very fit
that stay be made, and giue it out abroade
the execution is deferd till morning,
and when the streetes shall be a little cleerd,
to chaine them vp, and suddenly dispatch it.
Sheriff. Stay, in meane time me thinkes they come

along. 4°

The Prisoners are brought in well guarded.

See, they are comming, so, tis very well.
Bring Lincolne there the first vnto the tree.
Clo. I for I cry lag Sir.
Lin. I knewe the first Sir, did belong to me.

This the olde prouerbe now compleate dooth

make,
that Lincolne should be hangd for Londons

sake.
A Gods name, lets to woorke: {he goes vp.)

fellowe, dispatche,
I was the formoste man in this rebellion
and I the formoste that must dye for it.
Doll. Brauely Iohn Lincolne, let thy death expresse, 50

that as thou liu'dst a man, thou dyedst no lesse.
Lin. Doll Williamson, thine eyes shall witnesse it.
Then to all you that come to viewe mine end,
I must confesse, I had no ill intent,
but against such as wrongd vs ouer much.

43. Added by B in the margin.

FROM SIR THOMAS MORE 221

And now I can perceiue, it was not fit,
that priuate men should carue out their re-

dresse,
which way they list, no, learne it now by me
obedience is the best in eche degree.
And asking mercie meekely of my King, 60
I paciently submit me to the lawe.
But God forgiue them that were cause of it •
and as a Christian, truely from my hart:
I likewise craue they would forgiue me too.

that others by example of the same For.. 11a

hencefoorth be warned to attempt the like
gainst any alien that repaireth hether
fare ye well all, the next time that we meete
I trust in heauen we shall eche other greete. 70

He I e apes off.
Doll. Farewell Iohn Lincoln, say all what they can:
thou liu'dst a good fellowe, and dyedst an
honest man.
Clo. Wold I weare so farre on my iurney the first
stretche is the worste me thinks.
Sheriff. Bring Williamson there forwarde.

Doll. Good Maister Shreeue, I haue an earnest
suite,
and as you are a man deny't me not.
Sheriff. Woman, what is it? be it in my power,
thou shalt obtayne it.
Doll. Let me dye next Sir, that is all I craue, 80

you knowe not what a comforte you shall

bring
to my poore hart to dye before my husband.
Sheriff. Bring her to death, she shall haue her desire.
73-4. Added by B in the margin.

222 ILL MAY DAY SCENES

Clo. Sir and I haue a suite to you too.
[Sheriff.] What is ytt.

[Clo.] That as you haue hangd Lincolne first and will
hange hir nexte so you will nott hange me at
all.
[Sheriff.] Naye you set ope the counter gates and you

must hange [for] the folye. 90

[C/o.] Well then so much for that.
Doll. Sir, your free bountie much contents my
minde,
commend me to that good Shreeue Maister

Moore,
and tell him had't not bin for his perswasion,
Iohn Lincolne had not hung heere as he does •
we would first haue [bin] lockt vp in Leaden-
hall,
and there bin burnt to ashes with the roofe.
Sheriff. Woman, what Maister Moore did, was a
subiects dutie,
and hath so pleasde our gracious Lord the

King,
that he is hence remoou'de to higher place, 100
and made of Councell to his Maiestie.
Doll. Well is he woorthie of it by my troth,
an honest, wise, well spoken gentleman,
yet would I praise his honestie much more,
if he had kept his woord, and sau'de our Hues,
but let that passe, men are but men, and so,
woords are but wordes, and payes not what

men owe.
Now husband, since perhaps the world may
say,

84-91. Added by B in the margin, the first speaker only
being indicated.

FROM SIR THOMAS MORE 223

that through my meanes thou comste thus to

thy end:
heere I beginne this cuppe of death to thee, 1 10
because thou shalt be sure to taste no wursse,
then I haue taken, that must goe before thee.
What though I be a woman, thats no matter,
I doo owe God a death, and I must pay him.
Husband, giue me thy hand, be not dismayed,
this charre beeing charde, then all our debt is

payd.
Only two little babes we leaue behinde vs,
and all I can bequeathe them at this time,
is but the looue of some good honest freend :
to bring them vp in charitable sorte. 120

What maisters, he goes vpright that neuer

haltes,
and they may Hue to mend their parents faultes.
Will, Why well sayd wife, yfaith thou cheerst my

hart,
giue me thy hand, lets kisse, and so lets part.

He kisses her on the ladder.
Doll. The next kisse Williamson, shalbe in heauen.

Now cheerely lads, George Bets, a hand with

thee,
and thine too Rafe, and thine good honest

Sherwin.
Now let me tell the women of this towne,
No straunger yet brought Doll to lying downe.
So long as I an Englishman can see, 130

Nor Frenche nor Dutche shall get a kisse of

me.
And when that I am dead, for me yet say,
I dyed in scorne to be a straungers preye.

A great shout and noise.

224 ILL MAY DAY SCENES

(within.) Pardon, pardon, pardon, pardon

roome for the Ea[r]le of Surrey, roome there
roome.

Enter Surrey.

Sur. Saue the mans life, if it be possible.
Sheriff. It is too late my Lord, hees dead alreadie.
Sur. I tell ye Maister Sheriffe, you are too forward e,
to make such haste with men vnto their death,
I thinke your paines will merit little thankes 140
since that his highnesse is so mercifull,
as not to spill the blood of any subiect.
Sheriff. My noble Lord, would we so much had
knowen,
the Councelles warrant hastened our dispatche,
it had not else bin doone so suddenly.
Sur. Sir Thomas Moore humbly vppon his knee,
did begge the hues of all, since on his woord
they did so gently yeeld. The King hath

graunted it,
and made him Lord High Chauncellour of

England,
according as he woorthily deserues. 150

Since Lincolnes life cannot be had againe,
then for the rest, from my dread Soueraignes

lippes,
I heere pronounce free pardon for them all.
All (flinging vp cappes). God saue the King, God
saue the King,
my good Lord Chauncellour and the Earle of
Surrey.
Doll. And doll desires it from her very hart,

Moores name may Hue for this right noble
part.

FROM SIR TxHOMAS MORE 225

And whensoere we talke of ill May day:

praise Moore [whose] 159

Sur. In hope his highnesse clemencie and mercie, Fol. nb

which in the armes of milde and meeke compassion
would rather clip you, as the loouing nursse
oft dooth the waywarde infant, then to leaue you,
to the sharp rodd of iustice so to drawe you,
to shun such lewde assemblies, as beget
vnlawfull riots and such trayterous acts,
that striking with the hand of priuate hate,
maime your deare countrie with a publique wounde.
Oh God, that mercie, whose maiestick browe,
should be vnwrinckled, and that awefull iustice, 1 70
which looketh through a vaile of sufferaunce
vppon the frailtie of the multitude
should with the clamours of outragious wrongs,
be stird and wakened thus to punishment.
But your deserued death he dooth forgiue,
who giues you life, pray all he long may Hue.

All. God saue the King, God saue the King,

my good Lord Chauncellour and the Earle of
Surrey. Exeunt.

[The End.]

170-4. Marked for omission. It is not obvious why these
fine lines should have been condemned.

226 ILL MAY DAY SCENES

Appendix

[The following is the beginning of the original fifth
scene, between the Prentices in Cheapside, as preserved in
Munday's hand at the foot of fol. ^b. It is marked for
omission and was cancelled altogether in revision, the scene
at the Guildhall being presumably substituted in its place.]

Enter three or four e Prentises of trades, with a pair e
of cudgelles.

Harry. Come, lay downe the cudgelles. — Hoh Robin,
you met vs well at Bunhill, to haue you with vs
a Mayng this morning?
Robin. Faith Harrie, the head drawer at the Miter by
the great conduite, calld me vp, and we went to
breakefast into Saint Annes lane. But come,
who beginnes? In good faith I am cleane out of
practise: when wast at Garrets schoole Harrie?
Har. Not this great while, neuer since I brake his

vshers head, when he plaid his schollers prize at 10
the Starre in Bread streete, I vse all to George
Philpots at Dowgate, hees the best backsworde
man in England.
Kit. Bate me an ace of that, quoth Bolton.
Har. He not bate ye a pinne on't Sir, for, by this
cudgell tis true.
Kit. I will cudgell that oppinion out of ye: did you
breake an vshers head Sir?
Har. I marie did I Sir.
Kit. I am very glad on't, you shall breake mine too 2
and ye can.

FROM SIR THOMAS MORE 227

Har. Sirra, I pre thee what art thou ?
Kit. Why, I am a prentise as thou art, seest thou now:
He play with thee at blunt heere in Cheapeside,
and when thou hast doone, if thou beest angrie,
He fight with thee at [sharp] in Moorefeildes
I haue a swoord to serue my turne in a fauor...

come Iulie, to serue

15-2

228

VII. SPECIAL TRANSCRIPT
OF THE THREE PAGES

THE three pages of the Harleian manuscript written in
hand D have twice already been reproduced in type-
facsimile, first as part of the Malone Society's edition
of the play (M), and later in Sir Edward Maunde Thomp-
son's book on Shakespeare's Handwriting (T). In making
yet another essay faithfully to interpret the sometimes obscure
original for the use of modern readers, I have, of course,
availed myself to the full of previous attempts. If the three
prints are compared they will be found to differ in a
number of details, which fall into several distinct groups.
(i) Sir Edward's minute study of the manuscript, and the
fact that, at his suggestion, the second page was relieved of
its covering of tracing-paper, enabled him to correct certain
happily small errors of M. These corrections were silently
made and have been silently incorporated in the present
text, (ii) I have also in general followed T in those details
of capitalization and punctuation which must be classed as
matters of opinion, (iii) Further, I have gladly availed
myself of the readings of T in passages which were marked
as indecipherable in M, though a fresh examination of the
original has not always enabled me to distinguish quite as
much as Sir Edward, and I have felt bound to record an
occasional doubt in the notes, (iv) There are a few un-
questionable errors (one serious) common to M and T,
which I have, of course, taken the opportunity of correcting,
at the same time as (v) two or three trifling slips in T,
though in no case have I ventured to depart from Sir
Edward's readings without recording the fact in the notes,
(vi) Lastly there are two important readings which, since
they cannot be conveniently dealt with in the foot-notes,
are reserved for separate consideration at the end.

The few words or letters that have been irretrievably lost

TRANSCRIPT OF THE THREE PAGES 229

or yet remain undeciphered have been supplied conjectur-
ally within brackets. In doing so Dyce's readings, in so far
as he purported to be reproducing the original, have been
adopted, though it must be admitted that the minuter ex-
amination of the obscurities now possible rather tends to
shake one's confidence in his powers of decipherment.

I have aimed at preserving, so far as is possible in type,
the arrangement and general appearance of the original.
All words written by a hand other than D (in every case I
believe by C) are distinguished by heavier type. Where
deletions occur in conjunction with these insertions they
are to be taken as the work of the same corrector: all other
deletions are by D unless the contrary is stated in the notes.

It may be well to add that the present text has been
printed from an independent transcript made from the
excellent facsimiles in Sir Edward's book, so far as these
are legible, and carefully collated with M and T, while on
every point of possible doubt the original at the British
Museum has been examined.

The author wrote the text, at any rate of the first two
pages, continuously, dividing the speeches by rules but
without indicating the speakers. He then read it through,
inserting the prefixes and at the same time making certain
additions to the 'ext, namely, some words at the beginning
of 1. 22, at the end of 1. 38, and the whole of 1. 45. The
most natural explanation of the crowding of the text at the
foot of the second page is that the writer had no more paper
at hand, and that the third page was composed on a sub-
sequent occasion; a supposition borne out by a marked
difference in the general style of the handwriting. The
addition oi the speakers' names was certainly perfunctory,
especially on the first page, but, apart from the unsatisfactory
condition of the deleted passage on the third, I do not find
any evidence of haste or carelessness in the composition.

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Printed by W. Lewis

At the University Press

CAMBRIDGE

PR Pollard, Alfred William

2868 Shakespeare's hand in the

P6 play of Sir Thomas More

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

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Full text of "Shakespeare's hand in the play of Sir Thomas More; papers by Alfred W. Pollard [and others] With the text of Ill May day scenes"

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